ADDITIONS/ERRATA: - For those who want a straightforward SUPPORT caster, the BARD class is a great beginner choice! - 13:03 Inspire Courage also increases the barbarian's damage. It should read 22 damage on a hit, and 58.5 on a crit. This increases the average damage from a Strike attempt by 92% (from 13.325 to 25.625) (while also protecting the barbarian from damage) - 57:56 Tailwind/Longstrider is a self-only spell. The reason I mixed it up is that I've had campaigns where, because it's SO strong, I've seen martials nab it via Trick Magic Item. For casters, mobility is good for getting reach to enemies since many spells have only a 30' range, and a way to get out of danger. - 59:45 I failed to mention that, in the case of Summon Animal, SKUNKS and GIANT SKUNKS are quite strong to summon! An at-will AoE effect that Sickens on a successful save is no joke. - 1:05:10 Illusory creature does not have your defense scores. It uses your Spell DC as its defense scores, which is much better. --------------- The most common negative comment I've seen is "I don't want to play support/healbot": -Not only is that addressed in the video, but the FIRST FIVE MINUTES show how you can match a ranged martial in DPR PLUS have the advantage of versatile damage types and target weak defenses. It's remarkable that presenting a way to be virtually EQUAL to martials in damage does not satisfy some of the detractors. Someone commented that one "shouldn't need a university course" to have a satisfying caster. My response: - This is NOT a university course! - If you want to focus on single-target DPR, pick one of the available class+subclass options already in the game and ONE MINUTE into the video, which are proven to compete with ranged martials in that department - Good spells and concrete examples to think through how to assess spells, start at 49:59. (18 minutes, and you don't have to pay tuition!) - I acknowledge the higher skill floor in the FIRST MINUTE where I also preview that I will have a "How to Buff Casters" video. The "I didn't watch the video but will speak my mind anyway" energy is strong today!
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG RUclips comments tend to lose some data when edited (be it hearts from creators or pins), so they always need to be double-checked.
I also thought tailwind was on everyone but I suppose it being only on self makes it less of an auto pick. On another note, I really do think there is a culture bias against support roles, not just in table top but just in general. Maybe if more media showed off the support role we would have this problem as bad as we do
Did they change Focus spells again at some point? The remaster preview PDF says " The maximum number of Focus Points in your pool is always equal to the number of focus spells you know", but your note at 35:03 still says the max is three, like the current rules/
Foundry telling you by how much you succeeded or failed by is honestly so good for Pathfinder 2e. Everytime I see a Succeeded by 1 I think "thank god they had fear" or if I see a failed by 2 I think "I should have flanked them first".
I tend to remark about such situations in my game. 'you missed because he's no longer flat-footed, because the operative went for off target this turn' or 'that's a hit, only because he's flat-footed' next campaign will be PF2e, so it'll come up more often.
VERY true. My daughter's bard CONSTANTLY turns the tide. PF2E is SUCH an intuitive, scaleable system. In the end it is the easiest system to balance/homebrew [a serious problem I had with D&D]. While I tend to homebrew, PF2E rewards flavor while retaining more FLAVOR [which is what I empathize more than "power-playing"]. Granted, I've yet to run a Kineticist or the "new" classes, but even the Adventure Paths are WORTH the investment due to the mathematic consistency of the system. I love that PF2E is more decision-based & strategic than "stat" mongering. As "complex" as the PF2E seems it is far simpler once understood.
A reminder about Tailwind aka Longstrider: it is self-only spell, so you cannot buff party members with it, meaning that it is far less powerful than you interpret.
Did I make that mistake again? Blech, I keep doing that (because I BAN it in my games lol, I've had players use Trick Magic Item to nab it) Thanks, will pin a correction
@@christianlangdon3766 Keep in mind that in order to be able to do that, you would need to pick up Trick Magic Item and to have high enough modifier in appropriate skills, so it is still a fairly heavy investment.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG Yeah, it is a bit hard to remember because of PF 2e not really pointing out when a spell is Self-only, so I hope that's something the remaster could address. Honestly, I would say that the spell is balanced if you use it as intended (and is kind of necessary as part of the Transmuter package to make Ooze Form have reasonable speed), but it was definitely not intended to be picked up by non-casters via Trick Magic Item.
I will agree that spellcasters are good as soon as some enemies fail any important save against one of my spells. My sorcerer just made level 10... still waiting. Why is this an issue? 1- You're spell attacks and DCs will always lag behind everyone else. 2- Your spells will always take more actions to produce than most attacks (usually a minimum of 2 actions) and they are more limited due to daily limitations on slots 3- Saving throws are VERY unequal in Pathfinder 2E. The degree to which enemies tend to heavily favor Fortitude is known and lamented, but doubly awful if your abilities are disproportionately Fortitude save focused (due to bloodline/school spells or magical tradition). 4- Immunities will always target damage types related to spell casting more that martial attacks. Creatures are rarely immune to Bludgeoning Slashing, or Piercing. However, immunities to fire, electricity, acid, sleep, and so on are a dime a dozen. The net effect is the already subpar damage dealers (i.e.: casters) are targeted by immunities and resistances disproportionately over Martial damage dealers... who already had the advantage. 5- Enemy saving throws also tend to be imbalanced between the foes and your team. A single creature able to challenge a team will tend towards disproportionate bonusses to their Saves. Same goes for AC, BUT a bonus to hit will counter it. Flanking will counter it. Trips will counter it. Items with potency bonusses will counter it. The Martials always start with a higher bonus and have some tactic to lower the DC they are up against... you don't have either option. If you are a level 2 Aberrant Sorcerer who had to take Spider Sting (DC18) and your combined team is facing your average level 3 creature with a +9.5 (assume +10) Fortitude save... well, good luck debuffing that foe with your poison. You can move dangerously close to the enemy, expend a quarter of your daily spell slots, and will usually (65% chance) still have absolutely *no effect* as a support debuffer. 6- As a debuffer, the spells that work best on foes with certain battlefield roles will always target the enemy's best saves (its a sadistic catch-22). Effects like Faerie Dust and Feeblemind are best against enemy casters but require them to fail a Will save, which is likely their best save. It would be great to lay an Enfeebling effect like Ray of Enfeeblement or Spider Sting on an enemy in the tanky melee monster role, but those effects target their Fortitude saves, which are likely their best saves. Ironically, if you want to generate effects with your spells, it would be more successful to target the tanks with Stupefy and the casters with Enfeeblement... and it would also be utterly useless. 7- Actions expended by the enemy to counter a PC's impact are very meaningful. A martial will not be something a foe can ignore. Because of the Martial's advantage in bonuses, they WILL affect the foe and therefore force responses. These responses take actions. Yet, ironically, GMs think that debuffing foes by burning enemy actions is what debuffers and controllers do. News flash: it isn't. Casters are usually provoking saves, which take no actions to roll and (as I covered above) those foes will usually succeed at the saves. The net result is that the foes will not even blow a single action and effectively ignore your caster while taking action-expensive countermeasures to fight the Martials... which makes martials the better debuffers and controllers as well. My Sorcerer's last adventure is a great case in point: in the ultimate battle, the foes burned many actions trying to counter the Martials' infinitely repeatable maneuvers (standing back up from trips, taking guarded steps to avoid AOOs, moving out of flank to avoid sneak attacks, etc.). For my part, I expended a full quarter of my spells for nothing. Illusions, Rays of Enfeeblement, Blindness, Spider Sting, Phantom Pain, you name it... I was effectively ignored by the entire enemy force. The caster's presence was an effective non-presence; the battle would have turned out the same had he not been there at all. And that non-effect was achieved with no actions or reactions of the enemies' part.... saving throws are free. This is the problem with relegating over half the classes in the game to the "support" role (besides the problem with pigeon-holing every caster class to the SAME role). If their "strength" is support, why does every caster (except healers/buffers) suck so bad at it?
Couldn't agree more. I have to say that the Bard is effective too, beacuse his composition buffs the entire party and take only 1 action to do so. The same goes for debuffing like Dirge of Doom. Basically, a Bard can buff the party and cast one spell in the same turn, every single turn. He is probably the better caster in the game, in my opinion.
I'm a nubbin' to PF2e, so I haven't run into this experience yet. Correct me if I am wrong in this summary: Your experience has been bad because saving throws are free, too easy for the enemy to succeed in making, and a success completely negates your character's action. What would you recommend as a solution? To me, I would think that most spells should still have some effect - if minimal - even if an enemy succeeds on a saving through. We already have some of this; Befuddle, for example, still applies a penalty even on a successful saving throw. It's minimal, sure, but . More spells - most, in fact - should operate this way. And then what about metamagic, or a feat, or some ability that would give you a minimum one round of duration on a spell? That way you can sacrifice a resource to ensure some level of minimal effect. Or maybe a second chance at forcing the effect through. Example: Determined Casting: You can recapture the magical energies that would otherwise be wasted when an enemy resists your spells. Once per day, after a target has succeeded against a saving throw from a spell you have cast, you can cast the same spell again on your next turn without expending a spell slot. The enemy suffers a penalty to their saving throw equal to half your level plus your key ability bonus. If you decide to do this, the target suffers no effects from the initial casting (even if there is an effect listed for a successful saving throw). Some things like this, I think, could go a long way to helping fix the feeling of helplessness. It's a spell caster. A master of the arcane arts, able to bend reality itself. It should be difficult for someone to just say "meh, whatever dude."
small nitpick about #5 but things like Demoralize and Bon Mot exist to reduce enemy DCs, and are especially good on Charisma casters. Albeit you need to invest skill feats to get this going
This is exactly how I felt when I played a bard through AV. Anytime I tried to effect the enemies directly it was often just ignored. It got so bad that if I was wasting spells on a nonbuff or heal then I was really hurting the team.
@@TheJuicyTangerinethat's yet another action tax in addition to recall knowledge. And often it's probably a strong save if you are wanting to target it.
Speaking of Summon spells. I'm currently in an Abomination Vault game as a Evocation Wizard with the Staff Nexus thesis, and the first time I Summon Construct in the game it brought in an Animated Broom. Its bristle attack can cause an enemy to lose an action due to coughing from dust. Which it did against a big spider-like creature twice. Never underestimate what a summons can do.
As a Druid I used some summons early in game. The Unicorn was great for its level. But cant say I have had that many impactful summons other than placing it in a flanking spot, and that can be a lv 1 critter. The higher level I get, the less I use the summons.
@@skink84 Summons are good, they are swiss army knife spells. You really have to know your critters though. It's the variety that matters with it, not the simple damage output of the creature, also you want these spell to occupy one of the top slots to be effective against equal enemies. You can summon a constrictor snake to block a very mobile creature or ride a unicorn out of danger and having it help with healing magic. Being able to think quick and know your pokemon team is key.
"Bring a ranged weapon" he says. Good advice, generally. I definitely didn't spend this past Saturday building an absolutely stupid "psychic who fights with a greataxe" character. Optimal it is not. Hamburger he will become. But I can't wait to actually try it out.
While I have some issues with accuracy and trailing scaling, I think there is a game design flaw with casters that no one is really bringing up. PF2e is a game about teamwork and every +1 mattering, and this works for character skill checks, martial attacks, & even caster attacks, but caster saves don't go with this. What I mean is that you have item bonus, status bonus, circumstance bonus, enemy item penalty (non-existent), enemy status penalty, enemy circumstance penalty (basically only to AC), and rolling the dice. These apply to skill checks and martial attacks, and caster attacks just drop the item bonus. Since item bonus is buying equipment, that's something you do yourself, no teamwork involved. But any team could have a Bard or someone with the Marshal archetype to grant a status bonus, and that goes to martial and caster rolls. Any team could use the Aid action + reaction to grant a circumstance bonus, and that goes to martial and caster rolls. I've almost never been in a team that couldn't inflict frighten or another status penalty, and that goes to enemy rolls and what martials and casters need to hit. Circumstance penalties are extremely common for AC, flanking and tripping, this primarily goes to martials but can go to casters as well. Most team compositions can inflict multiple of these, and everyone can work together and share in achievements & victory by helping out. Except for save spells, those are limited to enemy penalties, and only status penalty in practicality; in short, basically you can get 1 teammate to do teamwork for a save spell instead of everyone chipping in because there's no benefit unlike in the other areas where you can roll. And it's limited, yhea sure the One for All Swashbuckler could do Bon Mot for lowering the will save, but the intimidation barbarian can't help out if bon mot works. And then there's the fact that you don't roll, I understand why, but not rolling dice in a game where you roll dice feels a bit bad. But mechanically it is an effective -1 due to Meets it Beats it. I.E. if you made a spell attack roll against an enemy's Will DC, the die result which you get the lowest success, is the same result of the enemy succeeding their save against you when they roll a Will save against your Spell DC. And another mechanical thing is that you can't affect the die such as using a Hero Point. There are a number of ways to affect a die to your favor, and Hero Points are common and for everyone, but fortune effects are easier to get for your attack rolls, than misfortune is for your enemy saving throws. I can't think of any, but there might be a few; but anyone can think of True Strike for this. As a note, I'm aware that this is also a problem with Martial DCs. And I would want those to get the same treatment as Caster Spell DCs. Although I don't know what form it could take without being drastic to the PF2e action/feat economy.
Whereas there are ways for non-casters to emulate specific abilities of spells when considered in isolation, they often require some kind of investment like a good Skill, Skill Feat, other feat, Hero Point, etc. Plus, off the top of my head casters have pretty much exclusive access to a variety of things like Haste, Slow, Wall of Stone. Also, Fear is much more powerful than a Demoralize. Plus, of course, AoE effects like starting at 1st level. Also, there's something to be said about the freedom to choose what you want to do, and adapt. It's a higher skill floor, but it isn't without its benefits.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG Many of the strong spells are DC less, like Haste and Wall of Stone and as such are easy to cast for none casters. One dedication feat and that character is in at the same level with a scroll that can be used when it has the most impact, or if they wait 4 levels they can also have a slot for that same spell. And I think we all know that Slows effect is an outlier, just like the range of fireball. And while Demoralize is 1 degree lower per success level than Fear, skills like intimidate that that target the very same saves are four levels ahead with 1-3+ item bonuses and sometimes feats that bump them even higher. At it's third rank Fear has the obvius benefit of emulating high level archetype feats that usually are restrictive in some way. That is not to mention the fact that Fear is repeatable, while intimidate only works ones. I do think casters are fine, it is just a bit too easy to do magic with a marshal chassi. And maybe feats like Intimidating strike and Debilitating Shot that bypass the weaker class DCs of marshal characters applying conditions directly with weapon proficiency.
Saving throws come with effect on success, so it's normal they are harder to impact with malus. On this note, sickening is amazing, such is frightened. Yeah stuff like zombies will be immune to both but guess what, positive destroy those. Be smart
IMHO it all goes to how most DM will describes things. More will describe the kills more in details, giving physical details like your hit is so powerful that you slice the creature in half, while forgetting to bring in teamwork like recalling that the monster was so scared that he forgot everything about how to properly defends as the barbarian slides it in half(reminding that the fear spell was a reason for the critical hit in the first place). The impact of support actions is often forgotten in the narration and only the big hit is remembered.
I mean the biggest issue is that something being technically good and feeling good is different. Playing a caster and using spell attacks doesn’t feel good. Saves and AC are higher and you will be relatively lower. You can flank or perform special aiming meta-magic or actions or wield runes for accuracy. So you will often spend two actions (or three with spell strike) and constantly miss or rarely crit if that’s how you want to play. Also, though I’m sure those players exist, I’ve had about a dozen players and all of them hate the spell learning system where you have to learn everything at different levels unless they are signature. Hate it. What an unnecessary hassle. Kinda wish they just made it so that signature spells could maybe be heightened for cheaper, or meta-magic for free once per encounter. I think we as a community have a habit of saying “oh it’s good under these conditions”, “git gud”, or “it’s not that bad” but then when other games are a bit messier but are actually more consistently satisfying for that fantasy we are shocked that more aren’t flocking over.
yeah; Vancian casting is clunky, it is unfriendly to beginners and really exacerbates the early feeling for casters that they just can't do a lot. for all of the horrible problems with 5E's magic and how broken and bloated the spell list is, and actual system itself is actually just superior to Pathfinder 2E. It's so simple, so intuitive and just fun to play around with. Here's my spells, here's my spell slots, I can mix and match my spells as I desire. The ability to cast Shield 11 times is only problematic because Shield is a broken spell. It's a mistake, imho, to conflate the fact that so many 5E spells are overwhelmingly dominant choices with the fact that the system enables so much player agency and is easy to understand / fun to play with.
Summoning caster minions is effectively turning one spell slot into multiple. Yes, the individual spells won't be as strong, but it also allows a backline caster to cast two spells a turn.
I'm new to P2E. Hell, I'm.*published* in 5E D&D. I've long thought that 5E magic was too easy. A wizard, or even moreso, Sorcerer, can break an encounter with Metamagic. Whereas I recognize that PF2E magic isn't as flashy, it CERTAINLY leans into the teamwork aspect of gameplay. Moreso, it can swing a battle where a simple alteration of AC or DCs in 5E couldn't. I applaud your efforts, insights and comments. Thank you. I look forward to some weird Fleshwarp Sorcerer or Witch in my future, manipulating events and combat. As an aside, I do enjoy Glass Cannon, and have so for a couple of years now. PF2E, and now 2E, are not strangers, though I am only starting to play it as a newbie. Thanks for all you do.
Honestly, I don't really get the "puppeteer" part when you talk about support casters. The effects of the buff/debuff spells are just not that apparent unless you watch every dice roll to see whether it landed exactly on the number where, say +1 from Heroism made a difference. And I'm not saying that effect is weak necessarily, I'm just saying that it requires quite some stretching to feel like a "puppeteer" in that case. If it was regarding 3.5e supportive spells, I'd agree, but something like Fear or Heroism - not really. Every +1 matters, but I wouldn't want to play the class with the entire identity of giving +1. This is what I call "agency problem" when it comes to support. Giving Heroism or Magic Weapon to the Fighter is useful, but I think it's inherently a very passive action. You only get to see the impact if you monitor the dice as mentioned, and in the end - whether your spell actually affected the outcome now entirely depends on the Fighter's actions or decisions, and their dice rolls. Not even my dice rolls, although for debuffs you have to rely on them to even land the debuff in the first place. You know what activity feels much more like being a puppeteer? Four Winds impulse. It has an immediate effect, it is not doing damage and might not even always useful, but it really seems to me like a "support" activity that would feel good to use every time I use it. Math fixer spells however... not so much.
watching the dice for narrating when the +1 matters is literally the GM's role to narrate the rolls, and if they use Foundry VTT there is even a mod that highlites when they should narrate. Yes if they are not telling the melee that they would have missed if the bard had not held their hand and showed them how to hold their sword properly, then no difference may be noticed. Also the bard could also just declare they cast fighter and make sure to take credit for the hit reminding the fighter they would be nothing without their hand holding.
@@yarnevk and Fighter can reasonably reply that without him, his accuracy, his damage die and his positioning and decision making this attack wouldn't have happened at all. Though I would say if this conversation is to happen at all, there's something wrong at the table. If this is required, then I think there's something wrong with the system if player enjoyment should come from "actually, that only happened because of me!"
There are lots of spells that screw with the opponent even on a success. You can definitely have a debuff/bfc type support caster. The right spells in the right encounter is pretty powerful (relative to the design in the system). I've mentioned this before, but timing sucked for when I used grease against rat creatures. Our most recent session just ended mid combat, preventing an the possibility of a two front assault with me casting charm on a goblin guard, the mage hitting magic user with acid arrow, and me incidentally finishing the magic user with gust of wind (bludgeoning damage from crit fail) trying to clear the way for the fighter. Just have to find the right spells with good "save & suck even with a success" and figure out which save to target (recall knowledge is great for this btw).
@@HaibaneKuu Sure, the table CAN argue about who's MVP but unless they're doing so all in good fun and the "winner" of the argument doesn't matter then you're gonna have a miserable time playing with that group no matter what system you're playing.
Our first 2E party has a witch as the sole caster, which is a class that Reddit has deemed to be on the weaker side. Our witch is awesome. Constantly debuffing enemies, or throwing out soothes, while invisible. He’s also the main source of CHA skills in our party.
This is a very valid and awesome mode to play and is fun if this is what you want. This does not take aaay from the the fact that you cannot do the opposite as effectively. Your witch cannot eschew all his soothes and debuffs and try to vomit swarm or other attacks spells and be effective. The beef is that the system pushes you to be one and makes being the other next to impossible.
The system requires COLLABORATION wether you play a caster or a martial. No fighter is going to solo an hard encounter, and the same is FORTUNATELY TRUE for casters as well. Your beef with the system seems to be that casters cannot “win the game” alone like they could in 3rd Ed and PF1 (but also 5th Ed)
@@neurolancer81 idk how you define effective, but casters have access to aoe damage, persistent damage, and damage of way more types than most martials do. If you want to make a single target blaster, they will be similar to a ranged martial character, and both will fall short of a melee character. That doesn’t make casters weak at blasting, and it’s definitely not impossible like you say… It’s just not OP like 5e.
Preface: I'm a Witch lover. I fuckin' *love* that class, even with some of its flaws. Am currently enjoying playing a Druid in my Exctinction Curse game, and having quite a bit of fun with Gunslinger in a ported-over Hell's Vengeance. I think a lot of people would be quite satisfied if the current incarnation of True Strike/Sure Strike was removed in its entirety and spell attack roll math was redone in accordance. It's literally unacceptable that ALL attack roll spells are balanced in accordance with *a single 1st level spell* that not even all casters can have access to. Look, I get it, advantage is cool and all - rolling two dice feels powerful - but the fact that it warps the math enough that ALL casters are assumed to have it and the spell attack roll math is cut for it is more than a little silly. It's literally stifling the ability for attack roll spells to shine at all. Remove True Strike/Sure Strike as it is. Allow casters who want to focus on blasting an item akin to a Gate Attenuator. Maybe it scales a level or two slower to help Kineticist keep their Impulse Attack Roll niche, or maybe it only affects LEVELED spells to keep cantrip spamming from out DPSing ranged martials (not really a big issue imo but that's another discussion). That would go a long way, really, and you wouldn't even have to mess with the Spell DC scaling. Attack Roll spells must be treated like save-or-suck spells, because that's what they are - you miss and you get nothing. Save spells are balanced around Success and Failure being the most common outcomes, and that I can accept since Successes typically have effects, though minor. Attack roll spells unfortunately don't get that luxury, and a lot of them are kinda... boring, to boot, being JUST damage. I would *absolutely* trade away some of the damage from these spells for more interesting effects on-hit rather than just relegating cool effects to crits. More Murderous Vines and Briny Bolts, less Scorching Rays and 4th level Chromatic Rays. --- Another issue that gets brought up is the fact that, while casters have ample (some might even say TOO many) options to help martials and each other, there's really not that many ways for Martials to reciprocate other than "deal more damage so the enemies die quicker". Bon Mot only helps with Will save spells. Frightened 1 is the most common positive occurrence from Demoralize and only lasts until the end of the enemy's next turn, making it fiddly sometimes (especially since they're immune to your attempts afterwards). Clumsy is only available from a Rogue feat that affects Debilitating Strikes off the top of my head, and there's like next to nothing to affect Fort saves that I can remember (would love to be shown some if they exist). Like, really? Being *prone* or *restrained* doesn't give you a malus to Reflex saves? Gunslinger's Called Shot is *really* cool because it can inflict Enfeebled, or Stupefied, or -10 foot Speed, or make flying things fall (with no save, DAYUM), but that's an exception that proves the rule. It really damages the whole "teamwork makes the dream work" argument when only one side gets all the teamwork tools to help the other side. It also doesn't help that martials are somewhat pressured into speccing into specifically Charisma *because* Bon Mot and Demoralize are so useful for everyone in the party, not just themselves, so "more optimal" martials look a little more samey. Martials should have more ways to help casters. Even if they're binary saves, it doesn't matter if it's repeatable. Bash the shield into his leg to make him Clumsy 1 for a a round, punch him in the kidney to give him a -1 to Fort saves, stuff like that. (This also has the benefit of giving more uses to the oft-ignored Class DC of Martials)
We keep bringing up that factual point and keep being told we're powerhungry drama queens. Balanced around True Strike or not, the point about spell attack is very valid. The math is there, there is nothing to argue about. I for one would be much happier with True Strike being a once per 10 mins per target thing and spell attack being brought back in line with the rest of the whole system. That alone would have a decent impact on how casters play. Casters are not "weak". They were brought in line as they very much needed to be. They just feel bad to play in the system. Remember when martials needed to do fullrounds? That's how it feels with blaster casters now. It was bad design then and it still is now. I think the examples given in the video do more to highlight the shortcomings than they do to show it "works". They literally burn everything to do good for one combat. Your damaging spells scaling with spell rank means most will compete for top slots, who also have their own great non-damaging spells you or your party would want to use. It's not that casters are rng, it's past that. The rng doesnt dictate if you do great as much as if you simply keep up. In another vein, I personally think Sorcs make for the most consistant and fun blasters in the current system. Signature spells mean you nearly always have something that works to upcast. Otherwise, you are often better served just memorizing a bunch of Magic Missiles. Maybe Vancian casting is showing its age?
@@Myrdraall I've always believed it's simply not possible to create a balanced, feels-good "blasting" class with a purely Vancian caster, mostly for the fact that *it's impossible to dictate how many encounters per day every table has.* Even in 2e, if you only have a couple encounters per day, you can be content just throwing out leveled spells nearly every turn, feeling pretty good and powerful, unless you *really* fucked up your prep that day. Conversely, if a table has, like, 10 encounters in a day or more, even the most well-organized and research-using wizard will feel stifled, at early levels having to go entire encounters without casting a leveled spell unless it's deemed "necessary". Hell, even at the same table, the encounters per day can change, wildly changing how powerful a pure-Vancian caster is by-day. Some days you'll be a nuke, flinging all your spells and making martials jealous, and other days you'll wish you had picked up runes for your trusty crossbow or coat pistol. That design ethos just *is not* built for blasting. It is best used, as has been shown time and again, for a toolbox playstyle, and trying to use a pure Vancian caster for a blaster is going to be fitting a square peg in a round hole, regardless of which side of the spectrum you're on for numbers of encounters. That's just the nature of being focused around all-day abilities that you have to choose. And you know what? That's fine, I think. It's okay that some classes prefer a toolbox playstyle over others. I don't think Vancian casting is "showing its age" moreso that people are finally realizing what its limitations are when casters aren't allowed to do dumb shit that make their limitations meaningless. Part of it *is* player expectation, and part of it is Paizo needing to *manage* that player expectation. Sorcerer and modified Vancian casters like Magus and classes that are caster-like such as Kineticist show me that they want to give us damage-focused magic classes, but also realize this similar limitation in pure Vancian casting. I think if they ever want to lean into being more aggressive with spells on, say, WIzard, or Witch, with Patrons or Curriculum, the Focus Spells tied to them need to feel good. Of course, all of this doesn't mean that there still aren't things that can be smoothed-out about Vancian casters, as has been talked about. I will say there are plenty of voices spoiling the conversation, and I think that this video is more for them than us. Because we understand casters aren't bad, they just have flaws, like plenty of classes.
Nitpick: @13 : The barbarian is listed to do 21 damage on both scenarios, but it should be 22 on the "improved scenario". (also 57.5 on a crit). This is an 90% increase of average damage dealt.
Hark! Ronald, you are a superstar of this community. Your content is always helpful, engaging and thorough. I follow many amazing PF content creators, but you have been the shining star at my table and have been a tremendous help for our transition to PF2e. Diving into the comments, particularly Reddit from what I've seen, really saddens me when I see people leaving ungrateful, irredeemably mean, or otherwise not constructive comments in response to your passion for and dedication to the community. You handle it with grace that's beyond me. Truly, your AC and saving throws are legendary. I hope you know how important you are to this community. You rock!
Heightens slow is where it really starts to shine. When targeting a group of enemies there's always a good chance that at least one enemy crit fails it and slowed 2 means that it's not going to be doing much for the remainder of the fight. As a bard I like to combine it with dirge of doom, frighten the enemy to lower their save then hit them with level 6 slow. I'm kinda sad that you didn't mention soothe, but I guess it's just a less flexible version of the heal spell for occult spellcasters.
@@elsewhereprince3969 It has it's own niche because of that and the mental defense buff. I don't think the not having the positive trait is relevant unless you have some weird party composition like having undead allies/party members. But it does give the spell it's own flavour compared to the heal spell. Clerics/druids heal/turn undead. Bards soothe.
It kinda sounds like rather than True Strike (Sure Strike) being brought into other casters, it should be rebalanced to be less of an auto-pick (perhaps a +1 status bonus to attack and +2 when heightened) or other 1-action spells that modify attacks in other ways should be added so there's choice (-2 status penalty to attack but it targets two things, etc.). If you're at range (which you generally are as a caster), then any daily spell slot spell with an attack roll should always be preceded by True Strike, by the sounds of it. Obviously this doesn't apply to saving throw spells (so more supportive casters).
The issue with that is that True Strike is turned into a status bonus, which could be given to you by a Martial with the Marshal archetype, or a bard using inspire courage, or someone casting heroism on you, etc. AKA, a spell and action cost on something that another party member would likely give you or multiple party members already.
@@lavabomba yeah this was specifically my point. It makes it a non-mandatory spell and instead is an alternate for those other effects; more things providing the "same" buff so more options and less requirements.
I agree that cooperation is the key to win some encounters in PF2e. I think Clerics and Bards works well and they support the martial beacause they have powers, like Bard compositions of Cleric's Font of Life, that do the job without consuming spell slots. My problems is with the Wizard, The Witch or the Oracle: in my opinion they are really underpowered. In PF2, if you buff or heal the party, magic is adequate but if you need to deal damage, control the terrain or debuff, there are only a few useful. In my opinion, in PF2, if you are a passive caster, so you don't have to deal with the enemy directly, you can do a nice job. But, if you hope to deal damage or debuff an enemy, especially a Boss, you'll feel powerless: your spell attack roll will be very low, you defenses will be awful, your Spell DC will not keep up with the martials characters.
Yes this is what I've been saying. People keep hyper focusing on a partial aspect but it's the whole offense part that doesn't feel good. I played a bard through AV and it was awful if I tried to do anything but buff or heal.
Definitely get the "linear fighter vs quadriatic wizard" problem. But, dang, whenever I assess spellcasters, I see that players of these classes have to do a lot more work, know a lot more rules, generally contribute a lot more to the table (helping others with rules because they had to study them), than those who pick simpler classes to play. I have sympathy and desire to reward those players, and therefore tend to think there should be a power gap of some degree (even a bit more than "but they have more options"). So the idea that PF2 casters are nerfed and shine less than martial bothers me. Players already have to put more effort into playing casters. This has been my #1 reluctance to give PF2 a spin.
That's a fair criticism, but consider that players who already DO have a great degree of system mastery now get free perks/more power just for doing something they already planned to do. If you are fine with that, than enjoy. I'd instead encourage streamlining of caster system mastery. Remind other players that they can/should use recall knowledge or try to debuff targets with their skill actions so casters don't have to do all that themselves. Reward players that help others at your table with hero points instead of math modifiers or bonus spell slots, etc. Caster players don't "have" to do a lot more work than other PCs. They just gain a potential advantage if they do. Mostly, that advantage is situational solutions, not raw power increases. Keeping to the CRB for example will allow for plenty of power, utility and versatility, without an overwhelming hundreds of spells to chose from.
Final Sacrifice is pretty nice on a witch since your familiar comes back every daily prep, getting access to fireball at that low of a level can save you sometimes
And manifold missile wands are just always fun! You want to be a turret? Got two hands? Got two turns? Become the turret with 2 actions free of missiles for the next 9 rounds.
Incapacitation, if it instead gave +5 to the target's save instead of directly adjusting their degree of success (+10 equivalent) would be helpful. At the moment, you're either hunting for spells during character creation where it feels like the designer forgot to include Incapacitation, or where the effect on success is so strong that you don't care.
I actually tried to homebrew it with a sliding scale (Monsterlevel-Spelllevel)/2 rounded down. So if you use a level 1 spell on a lv 20 monster they still get a massive bonus (20-1)/2=9.5 rounded down = +9 but it doesn't make those spells completely useless. (Esp. Low-mid-tier)
@@trafalgarla I think that's way too crass. Also why would a lv20 monster be as good as a lv3 monster at resisting a lv1 spell. As spells are highly dependant on crit effects and spells have already low crit chance this just means inc spells shouldn't ever be taken, at low levels as they are only good for about 3 sessions or so. (Unless you constantly heighten them, which may also not be what you want.
@@trafalgarla also the issue is that you also turn fails into successes and successes into crit successes (unless I misunderstood how incapacitation works) Edit: Just reread the incap. And yes incap saves get turned one degree better, which is like a +10 on any space against an incap spell. If they don't want incap effects, why even include them.
@@keit99 The designers DO want incapacitation effects in the game, just not from low level spells against higher level opponents. Using a level 1 spell to nearly autowin against a level 6 or less monster was a thing you could do in PF1. More importantly, monsters often have innate spells. If you throw several lower level enemies against a party, and they all cast sleep, color spray, etc, they could decimate a party thanks to attrition rolls. Ensuring that no PC above double the level of the spell can ever earn a critical failure thanks to incapacitation is a good thing and working as designed.
I feel like the worst thing about spellcasters is the fantasy. I only play spellcasters because all my friends hate them and i also love them. But where martials can come up with concepts and choose a class and weapons that fit in, while aways being pretty useful in combat, casters give you different ways to cast the same optimized spells. The spell list is so vast, but most of the combat spells are pretty bad. The worst part is the spell system, you need to be prepared to the situations you will face and then boom, something out of plans happens and some of your limited resources you assigned at your daily preparations are wasted. Meanwhile spontaneous casters need to take the same optimized heightned spells to use in different spell slots, cause everything else would make them feel useless when they spend their limited resources just to get the enemy succeed at the saving throw even though it's his lowest save. It's so hard and restrictive to play a spellcaster right when compared to a martial, and so more punishing to waste your resources. You are bond to spells that have efects at enemy sucess, buffs and spells without saving throws. Martial can unga and bunga, get big numbers and be happy. Casters need to go through all the mental gymnastics to be a hype man or setup a combo, fail a save and just feel like a dead weight. That's the feeling i had multiple times through my first two campaings. But i'm not giving up on being a caster, i get what their strenghts are and am trying to play around them. Just wanted to be more independent and able to hit spell attacks. I apologize if any part of my comment has bad grammar, i'm not a native english speaker. Would love to be able to discuss the points i tried to raise and discuss ways to house rule some things without trying to take the martials place as damage dealers.
Been running a small campaign as gm with my wife and oldest son as the players. It's our first time with Pathfinder for all of us, and these videos are very helpful to us three newbies!
The first reddit post listed "ALL casters can easily grab dangerous sorcery at level 4" as an advantage, which is ridiculous. You would have to forego 2 class feats and you're locked into the sorcerer dedication for another feat even if there's nothing else you want. If you were a wizard at level 4 with dangerous sorcery you gave up so many options like reach or widen spell, just to get a little more damage to be on par with a ranged martial character.
1) Free archetype exists and it's pretty widely used out there 2) Casters usually don't have really important or impactfull feats early on, so the 2 feat cost might be worth it, depending on the build
@@vehemetipolygoniae2197 You are completely ignoring the fact that its not a normal class progression as apart of every single casters line-up. If you want to do *anything* else with your character at this low level and not have it be like this you are forced to use that free archetype on it, and 2 feats. Why does my characters Character, or wants a player suffer so my character can be *kinda* better at dealing damage. This is assuming that you have Free Archetype at all which then makes it even more of an investment. Why is it as the OP was lightly implying almost mandatory for you to waste 3 full feats on every caster to spec into one very specific thing to make you slightly more consistent at something? For literally any other scenario it would be looked at like it is, which is ridiculous. A ranger can survive and do well and not have to take some mandatory thing even within his own class because he can choose any which way to play his class and come out on top, be it ranged, bows, crossbows, swords, sneaky, focus spells, etc. Sorry if this is a bit hostile but its not intended to just that this seems very dismissive and missing the point of the fellas above comment.
I'm just getting into Pathfinder (coming from 5e and 3.5e) and when I read Recall Knowledge I didn't get a sense that it told you statistics (low saves, etc.) at all. From what I gather, it tells you things like "Goblins are incredibly rash individuals and will act unpredictably", or on a critical success a bit more specific things about their actual combat abilities; in the Goblin example, maybe "Goblins are exceptionally nimble and can take a step if another Goblin moves next to them". As you mention in the video, errata/revisions (or more clarity) to this action would be nice. For now I will do as you suggest and add "noting statistical outliers" as a thing Recall Knowledge can do.
Since the players use a precious action, I ask the player if they want a specific piece of info (like the weakest defense), or something I think they would benefit knowing (like it has a 3 action powerful attack). My players use RK pretty often because of this I think.
The general guidelines for GMs are to provide the most well known piece of information about the creature when you successfully ID them-CRB p 506. The example provided is a troll's regeneration and it being disabled by fire/acid, or a Manticore's tail spike. Many creatures, especially humanoids like goblins, etc, don't have a prominent feature that fits that example. So for many, the most notable, predictable facet of a goblin is probably either that they are fairly simple minded creatures (read lower will saves) that are easy to manipulate or excite, or that they are particularly slippery foes, that are practiced at darting between their foes' legs when there are many of them (read as scuttle, high Ref, or decent stealth/acrobatics). That leaves GMs with a lot of latitude. What is the most prominent feature if they have more than one. How you describe that feature could lead to several conclusions (save modifier, tankiness, whether they have a special ability). Some leave the results vague, yet narrative ("Trolls are hard to kill, but deathly afraid of fire") and others are specific.
"You don't understand. We're not complaining about damage. We're complaining about our lower rate of gaining proficiency. Talking about going after the enemy's weakest saves or damage is strawmanning the argument." - People in comment sections to you. Looking at the Gamemastery Guide... The AC of monsters are Extreme to Low. The difference between the Extreme and Low is 6 (decreases by 2 each step). This difference is consistent between all monster levels. The saving throws of monsters are Extreme to Terrible. The difference between Extreme and Terrible is 9 to 14. This difference increases as the monsters gain levels. The difference between Extreme AC and Extreme saving throws is 8 or 9. This difference remains stable throughout all monster levels. The difference between High AC and High saving throws is 7 to 9. This difference increases as the monsters gain levels. The difference between Moderate AC and Moderate saving throws is 9 to 12. This difference increases as the monsters gain levels. The difference between Low AC and Low saving throws is 9 to 12. This difference increases as the monsters gain levels. Moderate and Low saving throws keep pace with their AC counterparts when you factor in the +1, +2, and +3 potency runes the martial characters will be having. Extreme and High saving throws lose pace with their AC counterparts, even before you factor in potency runes. Having offensive spells which target multiple saving throws is a requirement, no monster will have all three of their saving throws in the "high" tier without having a bad AC. The trick, as you say, is targetting the weak saves. In D&D 5e.. as there are multiple saves (6)... targetting the weak saves is pretty easy. Especially since the weak saves are pretty bad... as they don't have a "proficiency" in them so they just use their ability score modifier. So, players coming from 5e to PF2e will find their spells being resisted a bit more often. That might be part of the issue. As you've said, it takes more effort to be an effective caster-blaster in PF2e than in other systems people may be more familiar with.
I hope that you cover the limited prepared spells - I feel that if a prepared caster (wizard) has perfect configuration for a day and decides to use all his spells in one battle then he should be able to outcompete other classes in this one battle. Then he should be not too useful for the rest of the day - while somebody like kineticist can blast for the whole day. But now onto the watching :)
Going all out in one battle is a huge plus for casters, you’re so right. They have the limited resources, which means if they save them for the boss fight, they will be increasingly effective! Tactical planning like that is a option the martials don’t usually have.
Ronald, I have to push back on the recall knowledge. RAW you do not get save information from Recall Knowledge. So many people repeat this line it’s obnoxious. As a caster, you are forced to use meta knowledge to guess which save is lowest.
Yeaaah, it's just about the only thing in the system which is entirely left up to the GM. Having to ask what information it gives in combat is sometimes daunting when the GM wishes to keep some of their trump cards.
Also even with that if you fail your recall that's it, no more checks. Or of course, when a mindless creature's lowest save is will, that's usually pretty useless information.
A lot of the "casters are perfectly fine" argument boils down to: "Casters are fine if your GM interprets the rules this way and designs encounters such that they work well for the party build", which is something Ronald seems to miss a lot. Run things strictly RAW and play adventure paths and things start to suck.
@davidbowles7281 Right, but… if it’s a thing the GM has do, it’s not a feature of the system but a common patch. The GM can patch whatever they like but the useful conversation is to do with RAW, imho.
To add to Healing, unlike DND, the last hitpoint matters way more due to the Wounded condition. Edit: Mixed Wounded and Doomed up. Doomed is something different but similar to Wounded.
Thankfully the local PFS players value support characters, unfortunately it's been basically impossible to convince most of them to delay their turn for buffs
@@jbark678 I tend to go out of my way to make them, in part to show what they're capable of :D But also because there's a large group of people that just want to swing a big stick and not deal with the complexities of a support build. Even the non-caster support builds. (eg. rogues built around debilitating strike)
I love casters, but I'm not convinced that a +1 matters more than another fighter flanking... It's a better bonus and more chances to attack. I keep hearing the math benefits having casters and martials, but I'm just not seeing it in practice 🙃
@@JawaBob it's all about those crits. PF2 isn't about hitting and missing. You're going to get hit no matter what, and in Moderate or higher encounters you're going to be missing a lot while getting hit hard. It's all about mitigating crits so you don't go down too quickly. That's why +1 matter. But it's also why casters benefit more from utility than straight numbers. Casters can destroy enemy action economy, preventing a lot of incoming damage. And because it's usually multi-target, it's often far more effective than straight damage dealing.
Thank you for talking about the flexible casting, it's one of my greatest misgivings about moving back to PF and I never knew it existed. I'll be trying that out for sure!
Well, just watch the video, and in general it says: casters can be good BUT only for people who don't mind being horseshued to buffbot supports with utility. Which is absolutely the root of the "rebellion" in the first place. Well, my take is this: there's no point to constantly bring up how weak blasters are in the mix team. It's just facts, and nothing will change until devs change their mind or simply doesn't change at all. So, i have an advice for people like me. who like the idea of powerfull caster, and want to play casters in general - but upset how clunky they are in PF2. Look at your party: if half or more people considering playing spellcasters - do your thing, you definetely have a blast playing. If, however, it seems you will be the only caster - just switch to martial you like the most. That way - you will have maximum fun in the majority of your games, and that is what ultimately matters the most
Fighter is great at single target damage, Taking Damage Debuffs with frightening, Control with Improved Knockdown and Combat Grab. And can target AC, Fortitude, Reflex, or Will with different effects. And without resource costs round after round. They really are the Yes And class.
Yeah, it's great to have them as a baseline so every other martial has something to specialize into Like Champions with better armor proficiency and insane damage mitigation, Rangers/Rogues/Gunslingers with better perception, slingers/inventors/alchs with aoe, and so on. Fighter is good at some things, great at others, but not by so much it invalidates other martials.
Something to note about Summon spells. They scale horribly (minion level wise) because many higher level summonable creatures have spells of their own. The first turn 3-action summon can be painful, but then for 1 action sustain you turn that into a 2-action spell via your summoned minion (assuming the spell to be cast is not equal or higher level than the minion and it just winks out of existence). This is especially good when they have access to spells you normally don't such as Heal (or Harm for undead characters) on an arcane caster or buffs like Enlarge which don't require sustaining the spell. Enemy math has higher DCs than player math, so even minions that are quite lower in level than the party can still have spell DCs that are... okay enough. Being a cleric and using a 5th level animate undead to summon an undead mage for instance, turns three actions + 1 action sustains into casts of Enlarge (for the party martial) followed by some turns of magic missile and lightning bolt and harms until the enemies destroy the minion. The lower spell DC and limited spell rank may not compare to your own casts, but you use the summon to essentially fit in 3rd level spells for 1 action while you still have 2 actions to cast your own! This is doubly effective for Warpriests who might not have good spell DCs or even prepare blasting spells to begin with!
I’ve been exploring “gishier” caster (specifically the Wild Witch using Spirit Guide specific familiar). I’m experimenting using Elementalist now with the new RoE content and Wild Witch is actually the more interesting option (vs. Winter) because it retains Summon Animal/Plant&Fungus which adds some versatility for that lower INT. Thankfully it’s solo experimentation, so I can mess around with these 5-action turns without bogging down other people’s times.
Just leveled up to third level sorc & retrained one of my 1st level spells to Gust of Wind. First encounter with it: Wizard acid arrowed an npc magic user. Magic user & wizard block entrance. I cleared the entrance with Gust of Wind. Npc magic user also crit failed, so the extra bit if damage on top of the acid damage knocked her out as well. Good video even for experienced casters coming off a similar philosophy (I've always been an advocate of "use as few slots as possible to get the most advantage", even in d&d).
Here is my general list of divine spells that I get use out of, some might be gm dependent like Comprehend language. Shield Heal Fear Sanctuary Comprehend language Faerie Fire(vs invis) Inner Radiance Torrent(best Reflex save for us, hell this is the strongest damage spell for us and I am afraid they will nerf it because it is our only good damage spell) Roaring Appuaplse Show the way
Sixteen minutes in or so - Yes, being a "support" character can be essential to the team, but it feels bad when you're not allowed to do anything else of meaning to the group in combat and/or outside of combat to compensate. It's a "group fun" thing. I had a player who insisted that my cleric was there just to make his kamikaze style viable so the team did not end in a TPK every single combat... then insisted on taking the lead (or being overly-vocal) on every other facet of the game. I told him to convert to my god (which he couldn't/wouldn't), so I said "no healing" and became a versatile battle tank in my own right with the option of an amazing number of incredible utility spells that proved way more valuable than being a wet nurse. The Paladin in my group stepped up to provide heals so we could survive. I softened my stance after a while, but not until proving my worth and knocking him down a peg.
I feel like the "target lowest saves" is one of the lies that exist for casters. Lets forget that you actually have to use turn to know their lowest save, or even you must that spell prepared. 1st level Cleric really has no reflex saves that they can even use. What spells do you expect a Cleric(or divine caster) to actually use? There really isn't one.
These videos always assume that you have extensive meta knowledge, your spells prepared with actual future sight and that the DM isn't using boss monsters. Which all never happen in actual play.
Let's also not forget that "Recall Knowledge" is also a terribly worded rule and the result changes from GM to GM. There are also *specific* class feats that enable you to find out the lowest save, weaknesses, etc., like Combat Reading for Bard and Battle Assessment for Rogue. These will succeed more often than a Recall Knowledge check, and are precisely worded, whereas Recall Knowledge is not. However, once you know the lowest save, the enemy is still far more likely to succeed on their save than fail it.
i played a bard from 5 till 12th level. my mind changed on the casting portion of his kit multiple times through the campaign. like i never really specced into aoe but i had powerful and crippling diables, slow, 3rd level fear, phantasmal killer etc. and it went off at times even against the final book boss. my team had 2 summoners a gunslinger a fighter and a barb. So i was the perfect thing they were missing. I will likely play some kind of blaster next time i try it
Let me just get up from the back... *shuffles to the front* "Stop calling Kineticist a spellcaster they don't have actual spells, just spell like abilities its false advertising buddy" (not saying its a bad class, it actually looks fun haven't gotten to try it yet, but I hate the advertising as a spellcaster and disappointment in not having spells) Personally I want to have magic and be able to use a weapon, dnd simply makes that more viable. Pathfinder wants to make me specialize too much. Also I hate vancian casting and cannot take flexible caster with magus (have also not tried magus for this express reason, I have played sorcerer almost exclusively because I don't want to use vancian) Personally I play a sorcerer currently in one game and a fighter in another (i have also briefly played a rogue with summoner dedi). My sorcerer is a great blaster and absolutely pulls the most damage of the group early on when he his hitting well with his attacks. But he also requires more learning and work to stretch his spells throughout the day.
They act like spells though. "Abilities that restrict you from casting spells (such as being polymorphed into a battle form) or protect against spells (such as a spell that protects against other spells or a creature's bonus to saves against spells) also apply to impulses." This is about 80% of the situations that will come up in combat with spellcasting. They even use a separate DC and attack rolls just like spells do. Call a tomato a fruit, because sure, by a botanical definition, it is. But you put it in a salad with vegetables because culinarily it's treated like a vegetable.
Another plus point for needle darts is that it specifically calls them out as being made from metal in your possession, so carry a few silver coins and you have an ad hoc way to target stuff like silver weakness (when you're not doing something more valuable with your turn) (also applies to other special material metals).
You could also buy a simple silver ring or bracelet, which you can also use on the spell. And to my knowledge, you could also have like a cold iron ring/bracelet, or even adamantine, and the spell would then do cold iron, or adamantine, damage.
I wonder if there could be a place for spells like Horizon Thunder Sphere and Innter Radiance Torrent but being buff spells instead, something extremely powerful but taked 2 rounds to fully cast, that could warrant the party falling back to cover for the caster before reengaging stronger than ever
@@richarddarma1452 I only know of that one forum post from years ago where they said they were looking into it but never actually did, has there been more recent news?
At level 15 you’ll finally be able to disable an enemy for a turn or two using a daily resource! Don’t worry about the Barbarian critting and deleting enemies with an at-will action.
I think that the complaint against caster classes is that even if debuffing is powerful players find it lacking in fun they want a glass cannon build that feels like “great risk great reward” kind of build. They want to be able to go nova with the risk of burning out. A class design in trpg that does not allow a common trope or fantasy is kind of meh. The but they have better saves they have better utility…. They don’t want that. They want the option to lower all their defenses (high risk) for max output (reward). They want big boom moments they don’t want good average damage, they want a setup for big numbers like for example burning x spellslots for double damage but if they fumble they get stunned or hurt themselves. Because gambling and pushing your luck IS fun :)
After playing a wizard for some time, I'd only arrive to the conclusion that spellcasting classes ( or at least wizards, druids, sorcerers , bards : the spellcasting classes we actually tested) are only competitive as an archetype to a martial class - The other way around is obviously not true-. That's simply because the tools of your trade ( your spells) are considerably more taxed ( you have to spend more actions per activity)/ limited ( you make less damage per round on an average round)/ conditioned ( areas too big to be useful most of the time, poor spell attack -with no runes to improve- the incapacitating trait...) than the tools of martial classes ( their weapons). Moreover, your base qualities ( spell dc/attacks) are usually below the comparable qualities of most martials, and your defenses are on average sub par.
Can you do the antithesis of this video.. how to not play a caster? Basically the spells that are not good to pick or the spells that most people pick and then realize they don't like and throw away later? I know there are spells like that out there..
I don't know that your suggestion would be a great topic for a video. There are a LOT of spells that aren't worth picking for your limited options. Even many of those ARE valuable though when you include them as a scroll or part of a staff. I would suggest that most of the spells that are truly "terrible" are obvious, and can usually be seen as best for NPCs to improve their daily productivity or happiness.
Except that there is a factual mathematical inconsistency that was already highlighted 5 YEARS AGO during the playtest. Casters' can't flank, can't apply potency runes, their proficiency scales slower and saves win on a tie. If those were aligned with the rest of the whole system, there would be no conversation around caster power, good or ill. The proficiency scaling alone would fix most of it. They don't want to do more damage, they just want to not be crit resisted over half the time.
Spell attack rolls require the same skillset as those of a ranged martial. This makes them, from a skill standpoint, harder to deal with, as that is an entirely different set of mechanics. Additionally, you have to learn how to bring what you have magic-wise into play; being Invisible ultimately helps your spell attack rolls by making the baddie flat-footed. It is harder to blast as a spellcaster with spell attacks because you have to learn multiple rules and will still be behind the martials even then.
They can't flank, but neither can ranged martials and both still benefit from off-guard. They don't get potency runes, but auto-scaling cantrips and focus spells and higher spell slots. Proficiency scales slower, but they can pick their target save. Nothing new here...
@@willemgeertphaff1235 Yes, exactly how it should be if the numbers worked. They just dont. It's that simple. Cantrips scale to mirror Striking runes, but they're still 3 to 6 to-hit behind non-fighters. You can pick your save, but a lot of creatures have high saves across the board compared to your class DC, if you happen to have one of the right spells left in your limited slots anyway. If you look at a chart of what you need to hit an average creature, you'll see that it is by design quite constant for martials, but for some reason varies wildly for casters throughout their progression. The math is slightly off, and in a game where a +/-1 can equal 10-20%, it gets quite noticeable, that's all there is to it.
Thank you for this! I've just started playing my first Pathfinder 2e game, as a bard (since I love bards in 5e). We've only got a party of three; me, a fighter and a rogue, so I'm kinda trying to cover as many casting bases as I can. Inspire Courage is great, and I can't wait for a big boss so my magic weapon spell can shine on our fighter's sword. Plus, last session I used a ghost sound cantrip before initiative to scare a bunch of goblins with the sound of a couple of dogs barking and growling. I'm having a really good time so far.
Nothing about the game system itself is telling me that this death cleric that doesn't even have the heal spell is actually supposed to be played as a support.
The Cast Down feat is pretty much all you need really, it's a 1 action metamagic that sends your target prone if they take damage from your next heal/harm (any damage, so even if they normal succeed), it can be a 3 action long range reliable proning tool, or a melee 2 action into a 1 action strike if you're frontlining, works well with Divine Weapon too. Even outside of specifically using Harm with Cast Down you the Divine list doesn't change, you still have access to Bless Heroism Blazing Armory and so on, so you have access to amazing support tools regardless of your cleric font. If your party needs healing you're still likely to have decent medicine, and no need to feel like you're betraying your evil cleric vibe, Rovagug the god of destruction dictates: "All things must be destroyed, but the tools of destruction will be destroyed last."
Thank you for this video it's really amazing! I've been GM'ing the Beginner box now going into Abomination Vaults in Foundry and I have a few casters so this is going to help a lot.
This idea that blasters should compare with ranged martials is a misconception. A ranged martial has more hps and better ac than casters, they have same ac and same hps that martials have. So a ranged martial is safer than a melee one, but a caster doesn't get the same benefit so he shouldn't suffer the same trade off. Because a caster, except bounded casters and kinecist and few other exceptions, doesn't have a melee option to compare to in the first place.
The ranged martial has more HP and better AC, but the caster also has a better Will save and magic items to do more than just blast. And the blaster caster's raw DPR is comparable while also having the versatility to do different damage types and target weak defenses.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG Yes, and the caster paid for his versatility with limited spell slots. The damage begins to decrease as the spell level drops and that's fair, because you traded consistency for versatility, but you shouldn't have to pay the same price twice.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG Now that you've made me think about it, the versatility of casters suffers from quite a few problems, namely how bad some spells are. Starting with single target spells that have the incapacitation tag and only have a significant effect on failure or critical failure. Arriving at spells which, as you yourself point out, are only useful as a scroll and don't trigger a save, and these in themselves are not bad, but they are not exclusive to casters, because with a single dedication feat or sometimes even without, any martial can use them. To then get to npc spells, like "quick sort", up to spells that make you worse like "nudge the odds". So this versatility not only comes at a high price, but it's also marred by a huge amount of questionable spells.
With my sorcerer, all my signature spells are those with the incapacitation trait, so I can use the right rank for the right level of creature to get the most out of the spell.
I know they aren't bad but I just can't mentally pick incapacitation spells. I would rather just pick things like slow with doesn't have it and is always reliable
I love this vid! I so needed this as a new spellcaster to PF2. This helps it make so much more sense, especially for a prepared caster and I like how you outline the prcress, I'm so copying that down to have as a checklist next to me in my next game! Thanks again!
I'll be hesitantly getting into a new campaign- starting at level 5, at that. I will be using this as an effort to rework my mindset and try to give more.. strategic thinking to my spell selection and the likes. I think this will go better than my previous campaigns did. I think my failing points were: 1. Coming in with a 1E mindset of just expecting spells to flat obliterate anything. 2. The far more granular math, actions, and DCs/saving throws.
Idea: Divine and Primal casters get "Guided Strike" as divine or spiritual forces guide your next attack roll. Functionally similar but different to True Strike. Probably give like a +6 status bonus which is about on par with rerolling, but doesn't negate concealed/hidden, and wont stack with other status bonuses like Inspire Courage.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG I know in 5e its calculated to be about +5, but that's without the crit range rules that PF2e has. I'm surprised to hear that it's as low as +3 though, thought it would be around +4 to be equal.
@@Dharengo The creators of the game themselves say that spell attack accuracy is intentionally made the way it is due to true strike. You're just dead wrong.
Playing a 20th-level Wizard. Let me tell you that most 1st & 2nd rank spells do not scale that high up without being heightened. But 3rd rank Slow is still one of the best spells in my whole spell list even with 10th rank spells! Of course if you heighten it to 6th rank it is really ridiculous. Thank you for making this video. I think the most important lesson is just hoe important support spells are. I think in other systems they tend to be a bit boring because when get a slight buff when you can just outright kill an enemy as fast as possible. But PF2 is challenging and making your allies more effective really does give nice good teamwork vibes and celebrations. Playing a real support role in PF2 is much more rewarding and less boring than most other systems.
I actually think that having the spell slots like in D&D 5e is much more interesting and provides much more tactical combat situations then the Pathfinder 2E version of The Wizard where if you only chose to prepare Fireball once then you can only cast it once. So if you don't realize you're going to be going up against something week to Fire and you don't bother to prepare Fireball but you prepare a third level version of color blind, for instance, then you are sol. And that is not fun.
You want to make a worthwhile caster? -Ignore any offensive spell that either uses a spell attack or has anything other than a basic saving throw. -You do not advance in proficiency nearly as quick as a fighter, nor are their pieces of equipment that increase your spell DC or Spell attack, so you have to always assume they will make the save beyond level 4. -If given the option, always take the spell that buffs an ally over debuffing an opponent. No point in making a guy stunned for a turn if you have a 60% the spell slot doesn't do anything. -Think hard on spells that must be sustained, action economy is massive and losing a whole action a turn is devastating unless your action eats at least 1 of your opponents actions to deal with it you aren't winning the trade. -Always invest in reach spell feat because ignoring touch requirements on spells is the biggest powerboost in the game, It lets you maintain your distance and relative safety. Just find a big beefy martial with a fat attack and meaty damage dice and stack as many buffs as you can fit on him without overlaping...
You only have to do this if you yourself aren’t receiving any support from your martials and the other casters, martials feel pretty crummy too if they receive no support
Another cantrip that does damage on a failed attack is Acid Splash, as the splash damage takes effect on failed but not critically failed attacks. That and triggering area damage weakness make it useful despite the low scaling. Swarms and trolls beware.
Calling out spellcasters for being spoiled, is a high wisdom, low charisma move! ... If we are trying to convince casters, (or anyone,) to join our hobby, we should try to focus on the positives our our system, instead of driving them away by calling their fun "wrong." ... That's how public opinion turned against the gorgnard, no matter how valid their points may be. Let's not make the same mistake.
I think you make good points. And Paizo executed a non Anime Esque Martial Style (ie Path of War or Tome of Battle) as best as can be...but you kinda miss the point. Players don't like playing support in most games, there are some who do sure but most want to do damage or at least cool stuff in a fight. Casters don't get to do massive single target damage which might be fine but their mass CC from a Web or Mass Suggestion is also much worse. Hopefully leaning into more Thematic Casters will let them boost Casters up but the Kineticist was not reassuring. Still feels too nerfed
I will never understand not thinking support is cool as fuck. Being the difference between whether someone hits or misses, saves or sucks, or lives and dies - especially at the table of a social game - is easily one of the most satisfying feelings in the world.
@@Dimitrishuter it is, if you are actually making an noticeable positive impact. But buffs in pathfinder 2e are too small and shortlived as well as mostly nonstackable that you end up not mattering and any math will show your support caster being a fighter instead would have a much higher positive impact.
I liked this video on this topic much more than the other ones. Feels less “think differently stupid” and more of. Here is why these more supportive or debuff spells are actually good.
Summon spells are definitely good early, but later they don't quite work as well. Once you hit level 6 and above your highest level spell slot can only summon a creature 4 or 5 levels lower than the parties current level. So its attacks and DC'S will be low enough that all it is providing is out of combat utility, flanking and maybe draws the bosses second or third attack action, and it may just die from that. In this case the difference between your summon being 5 levels lower and 9 levels lower is meaningless and you have better uses for your highest spell slot.
Coming from Dnd just looking at magic missle, I'm already put off. The whole point of the spell was that it allowed the caster the option to choose which targets to hit. So if 3 wizards were channeling to open a gate to the nine hells, I could in 5e fire off a missile at each target run and duck behind a crate as the gate collapsed. In Path Finder, I could only target 1 creature, and I would have to sacrifice moving in order to cast the missles. So, if say by killing just one of the three channeling mages, it was enough to destabilize the portal, and upon doing this results in a violent collapse, sending a wave energy wiping out the two remaining mages and MYSELF! How is this good? There's things that intrigued me about Pathfinder. Seeing as I play dual wielding wizard in 5e, the very essence of my build would be impractical in Pathfinder 2. Why dual wield if penalized to the point any spell I were to cast wouldn't hit.
If your campaign often centers on one type of foe - either a monster keyword or an organization - then get additional lore on that type. That way you'll always have good recall knowledge. Spending an action can really help to avoid spending a spell slot going up against its highest defense. Or using an incap spell on a higher level monster. ----- For arcane and primal casters, they can get cantrips to deal almost any damage type. You can get extra cantrips through the additional cantrip feat, some ancestries, and multiclassing. Being able to target any weakness is a great way to enhance your effectiveness. With needle darts we add piercing and any special material you can get a chunk of.
I'm trying to figure out if the metal that is used for needle darts when it returns to you after the attack does it return to you in the same form that it was prior to the attack or is it just the chunk of metal now? Because in my current campaign I have a cold iron shield that would be amazing if I could use needle darts to have cold iron needle darts against Fey and still use it as a shield after the attack:-)
@@undrhil It's easy enough to ask. If not, you can get a chunk of cold iron or silver for 10 gp each. I'd like to see if they will come up with effects for other exotic materials. Essentially a focus cost for other effects.
3:20 Martial fans: "No u cant use a higher level creature as a single enemy in an encounter! Martials are worse at hitting them than casters!" ... Um, yeah? Youre listing a reason for the results of the testing not refuting it.
I personally find that it is hard to build effective "thematic" characters, particularly casters, in PF2e... You are correct in saying that their strength (and by extension weakness) is their versatility, in that if you build to a theme.... say a character who is not a jack-of-all-trades like an all fire, or an all cold, or all necrotic, damage based caster you are going to struggle (particularly depending on party composition) at low levels. I also personally find the "divine" list severely lacking early on unless you want to be strictly a support or healer type, particularly among certain sorcerer types (Divine) and even some cleric types (non Sarenrae cloisters). This leads to many interesting types being tried and quickly abandoned through sheer disappointment. A large part of this I blame on the design team leads. As we have seen, in many of their own words, we are playing their vision of the game, and some have shown us, again in their own words, that they hold philosophies that stray from the origins of a "collective storytelling roleplay game" into the realm of an adversarial board game at times. I cannot tell you how many times I have encountered GMs afraid to step outside the written AP and/or bend rules for the sake of a better story, or make the game into a party vs the GM debacle. (But that's a gripe for another time, and thankfully the latter is few and far between despite happening too often for my tastes.) That said, I want to thank Ronald for doing videos like this because it does open ones eyes to things that may have been overlooked and not often thought of strategies to make the game hopefully more enjoyable for players in those early, unforgiving, levels. I often find myself wishing they had made these early levels more survivable, giving players a slight leg up at the start, and gradually dialed things into a balance with things as the characters progress, and learn new strategies, tactics, and how their GM runs the game. If a player, new or old, but particularly new ones, does not have fun in those initial sessions and levels, you will lose them as they lose interest through frustration.
Casters need an item bonus too spell attack roles. Like +1 from lvl 1 too lvl10, +2 from 10 too 20 but it's on a staff. Eldritch trickster needs a massive buff.
I think my only issue with the flexible prepared casting (and the elemental spell list) is that they take a class feat slot. I get that flexible prepared casting gets less spell slots as a trade off. You get less spell slots but are also less likely to have wasted spell slots because you prepared a spell and a need for it didn't arise that day. But also taking your level 2 class feat just feels like a step too far to me, an extra penalty that doesn't really need to be there.
Pf2 is more about rules than anything else. Twice its popularity was due to WOTC mistakes. Its community is full of gatekeepers, and the magic system has issues that people are trying to "not address." If crunchines are what you like, then by all means, enjoy it. I would like to point out why the strongest mechanic of PF2 is the three actions economy: it makes things simple.
Also, a better comparison of focus spells is to compare them to the Warlock packed magic spell slots from 5e. Because they essentially match up as the Warlock has one spell slot at first level that they regain on a short rest which is 1 hour and 5B whereas most characters with the focus pool in 2E have one Focus point they only have to spend 10 minutes to reclaim that Focus point. So it finds up better to use that analogy for people who play 5V instead of using the 4E and counterpowers comparison that you used in the video.
I chose a Debuff/Control/Supp-ish Wizard for my first ever character in PF 2e, and man idk what to say... I'm supposed to be weak af yet I'm pretty sure I'm up there on the imaginary dps chart just by spamming Electric Arc. It's actually op because I do both AOE dmgs and control with just 2 actions using stuff like Scatter Scree as well. The only problem with magic (well I can only speak about this kind of wizard tbh, didn't try anything else yet), is that it can get a bit repetitive if the only thing you do for 5 fights is spam your cantrips; but there are ways to avoid that too... From staves or wands to scrolls and even some feats as well (for example, I'm aiming to get Battle Planner after upgrading Warfare in a couple lvls). Also also, if I remember correctly, even as a wizard you are trained with ranged weapons too, at least I believe you are with the crossbow, so there's an alternative to cantrips too.
@13:35 So this is one thing I don't get about pathfinders system. Yes, she now has a 25% chance to do crit damage, the additional damage she would do is 34. However in order to achieve this, 3 out of 4 party members had to give up doing potential damage, the sorcerer had to use one spell which is a relatively limited resource. 3 people "wasted" their turn, in order to give 1 character the ability to MAYBE do more damage. Those other party members are not really any better positioned themselves, fear will fall off next turn, flanking bonus would have been achieved regardless as both melee's got into position, the situation on the board is that they are not individually better off in the next round to do damage or support the fight. Are you saying that the other party members would not have been able to make up 34 damage if each had attempted an attack rather than supporting? And if she doesn't crit, what then? 3 out of 4 party members basically skipped their turn and got nothing out of it. The sorcerer had to use one spell which is a relatively limited resource. 3 people "wasted" their turn, in order to give 1 character the ability to MAYBE do double damage. If the other 3 party members are not playing builds that can make up that damage, then fine the optimal way to play is to buff their main DPS. But if they all have decent combat capability, then whats the point of paying the opportunity cost of applying status effects for 1 round only? Basically, whats the point in doubling your potential, not guaranteed but only potential, damage if it will require you to expend triple the number of actions and resources to set it up?
I hadn't thought about it before watching some of the list video, but the ability to choose between three target DCs that are likely different is a distinct advantage and tactical puzzle that AC has no equivalent of in the current edition. Including spell attacks that target AC, a thoughtful caster has 4 potential target numbers to choose from while most martials are stuck with one for dealing raw damage.
It honestly does not seem that interesting to me. Keep in mind on average beyond level 3 casters are -3 hit chance/ dc check in comparison to martials. In other words for you to have the sameish chance as the average martial to hit you need to know the enemies lowest number, and have the spell to target it, and if you do this are you rewarded with a higher chance to do something cool or helpful in comparison to a martial? Nope, just everything else has like 20% chance to fail at all and is more likely to be crit success. wait until "every +1 matters!" mfers see spellcasters delayed profeciency jumps and 0 hit chance scaling from runes. They don't seem to think those multiple +1s mean anything.
Soooo...if every +1 matters, and casters are automatically +1 to +3 lower on their attacks and DCs due to not having any item bonuses available like martials...I'm supposed to be okay with playing at that severe a mathematical disadvantage? How can I not feel much weaker when my spells are getting saved against or I'm just missing due to that lack of item enhancements?
ADDITIONS/ERRATA:
- For those who want a straightforward SUPPORT caster, the BARD class is a great beginner choice!
- 13:03 Inspire Courage also increases the barbarian's damage. It should read 22 damage on a hit, and 58.5 on a crit. This increases the average damage from a Strike attempt by 92% (from 13.325 to 25.625) (while also protecting the barbarian from damage)
- 57:56 Tailwind/Longstrider is a self-only spell. The reason I mixed it up is that I've had campaigns where, because it's SO strong, I've seen martials nab it via Trick Magic Item. For casters, mobility is good for getting reach to enemies since many spells have only a 30' range, and a way to get out of danger.
- 59:45 I failed to mention that, in the case of Summon Animal, SKUNKS and GIANT SKUNKS are quite strong to summon! An at-will AoE effect that Sickens on a successful save is no joke.
- 1:05:10 Illusory creature does not have your defense scores. It uses your Spell DC as its defense scores, which is much better.
---------------
The most common negative comment I've seen is "I don't want to play support/healbot":
-Not only is that addressed in the video, but the FIRST FIVE MINUTES show how you can match a ranged martial in DPR PLUS have the advantage of versatile damage types and target weak defenses. It's remarkable that presenting a way to be virtually EQUAL to martials in damage does not satisfy some of the detractors.
Someone commented that one "shouldn't need a university course" to have a satisfying caster.
My response:
- This is NOT a university course!
- If you want to focus on single-target DPR, pick one of the available class+subclass options already in the game and ONE MINUTE into the video, which are proven to compete with ranged martials in that department
- Good spells and concrete examples to think through how to assess spells, start at 49:59. (18 minutes, and you don't have to pay tuition!)
- I acknowledge the higher skill floor in the FIRST MINUTE where I also preview that I will have a "How to Buff Casters" video.
The "I didn't watch the video but will speak my mind anyway" energy is strong today!
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@@levkrasovsky4920I don't know why that happens so often, weird. Thx
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG RUclips comments tend to lose some data when edited (be it hearts from creators or pins), so they always need to be double-checked.
I also thought tailwind was on everyone but I suppose it being only on self makes it less of an auto pick.
On another note, I really do think there is a culture bias against support roles, not just in table top but just in general. Maybe if more media showed off the support role we would have this problem as bad as we do
Did they change Focus spells again at some point? The remaster preview PDF says " The maximum number of Focus Points in your pool is always equal to the number of focus spells you know", but your note at 35:03 still says the max is three, like the current rules/
Foundry telling you by how much you succeeded or failed by is honestly so good for Pathfinder 2e. Everytime I see a Succeeded by 1 I think "thank god they had fear" or if I see a failed by 2 I think "I should have flanked them first".
In a game where the difference maker can be as small as 1 or 2, you’re right. Foundry is pretty satisfying for that reason, and in general.
That's actually a mod and not built-in to the system in Foundry. It's called "Modifiers Matter"
I tend to remark about such situations in my game.
'you missed because he's no longer flat-footed, because the operative went for off target this turn'
or 'that's a hit, only because he's flat-footed'
next campaign will be PF2e, so it'll come up more often.
By default, Foundry PF2e rolls only shows players the degree of success, since showing the numbers would reveal the AC or DCs of the creature.
"Thank your bard" is the most common sentence out of my mouth while running PF2e
VERY true. My daughter's bard CONSTANTLY turns the tide. PF2E is SUCH an intuitive, scaleable system. In the end it is the easiest system to balance/homebrew [a serious problem I had with D&D].
While I tend to homebrew, PF2E rewards flavor while retaining more FLAVOR [which is what I empathize more than "power-playing"]. Granted, I've yet to run a Kineticist or the "new" classes, but even the Adventure Paths are WORTH the investment due to the mathematic consistency of the system. I love that PF2E is more decision-based & strategic than "stat" mongering.
As "complex" as the PF2E seems it is far simpler once understood.
A reminder about Tailwind aka Longstrider: it is self-only spell, so you cannot buff party members with it, meaning that it is far less powerful than you interpret.
Pretty sure the reason he dislikes it was due martials being able to afford the 2nd level version through scrolls and other means.
Did I make that mistake again? Blech, I keep doing that (because I BAN it in my games lol, I've had players use Trick Magic Item to nab it)
Thanks, will pin a correction
@@christianlangdon3766 Keep in mind that in order to be able to do that, you would need to pick up Trick Magic Item and to have high enough modifier in appropriate skills, so it is still a fairly heavy investment.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG Yeah, it is a bit hard to remember because of PF 2e not really pointing out when a spell is Self-only, so I hope that's something the remaster could address.
Honestly, I would say that the spell is balanced if you use it as intended (and is kind of necessary as part of the Transmuter package to make Ooze Form have reasonable speed), but it was definitely not intended to be picked up by non-casters via Trick Magic Item.
@@levkrasovsky4920
Yeah, I think it's alright on a non-melee character
I will agree that spellcasters are good as soon as some enemies fail any important save against one of my spells. My sorcerer just made level 10... still waiting. Why is this an issue?
1- You're spell attacks and DCs will always lag behind everyone else.
2- Your spells will always take more actions to produce than most attacks (usually a minimum of 2 actions) and they are more limited due to daily limitations on slots
3- Saving throws are VERY unequal in Pathfinder 2E. The degree to which enemies tend to heavily favor Fortitude is known and lamented, but doubly awful if your abilities are disproportionately Fortitude save focused (due to bloodline/school spells or magical tradition).
4- Immunities will always target damage types related to spell casting more that martial attacks. Creatures are rarely immune to Bludgeoning Slashing, or Piercing. However, immunities to fire, electricity, acid, sleep, and so on are a dime a dozen. The net effect is the already subpar damage dealers (i.e.: casters) are targeted by immunities and resistances disproportionately over Martial damage dealers... who already had the advantage.
5- Enemy saving throws also tend to be imbalanced between the foes and your team. A single creature able to challenge a team will tend towards disproportionate bonusses to their Saves. Same goes for AC, BUT a bonus to hit will counter it. Flanking will counter it. Trips will counter it. Items with potency bonusses will counter it. The Martials always start with a higher bonus and have some tactic to lower the DC they are up against... you don't have either option.
If you are a level 2 Aberrant Sorcerer who had to take Spider Sting (DC18) and your combined team is facing your average level 3 creature with a +9.5 (assume +10) Fortitude save... well, good luck debuffing that foe with your poison. You can move dangerously close to the enemy, expend a quarter of your daily spell slots, and will usually (65% chance) still have absolutely *no effect* as a support debuffer.
6- As a debuffer, the spells that work best on foes with certain battlefield roles will always target the enemy's best saves (its a sadistic catch-22). Effects like Faerie Dust and Feeblemind are best against enemy casters but require them to fail a Will save, which is likely their best save. It would be great to lay an Enfeebling effect like Ray of Enfeeblement or Spider Sting on an enemy in the tanky melee monster role, but those effects target their Fortitude saves, which are likely their best saves.
Ironically, if you want to generate effects with your spells, it would be more successful to target the tanks with Stupefy and the casters with Enfeeblement... and it would also be utterly useless.
7- Actions expended by the enemy to counter a PC's impact are very meaningful.
A martial will not be something a foe can ignore. Because of the Martial's advantage in bonuses, they WILL affect the foe and therefore force responses. These responses take actions. Yet, ironically, GMs think that debuffing foes by burning enemy actions is what debuffers and controllers do.
News flash: it isn't. Casters are usually provoking saves, which take no actions to roll and (as I covered above) those foes will usually succeed at the saves. The net result is that the foes will not even blow a single action and effectively ignore your caster while taking action-expensive countermeasures to fight the Martials... which makes martials the better debuffers and controllers as well.
My Sorcerer's last adventure is a great case in point: in the ultimate battle, the foes burned many actions trying to counter the Martials' infinitely repeatable maneuvers (standing back up from trips, taking guarded steps to avoid AOOs, moving out of flank to avoid sneak attacks, etc.). For my part, I expended a full quarter of my spells for nothing. Illusions, Rays of Enfeeblement, Blindness, Spider Sting, Phantom Pain, you name it... I was effectively ignored by the entire enemy force. The caster's presence was an effective non-presence; the battle would have turned out the same had he not been there at all. And that non-effect was achieved with no actions or reactions of the enemies' part.... saving throws are free.
This is the problem with relegating over half the classes in the game to the "support" role (besides the problem with pigeon-holing every caster class to the SAME role). If their "strength" is support, why does every caster (except healers/buffers) suck so bad at it?
Couldn't agree more. I have to say that the Bard is effective too, beacuse his composition buffs the entire party and take only 1 action to do so. The same goes for debuffing like Dirge of Doom. Basically, a Bard can buff the party and cast one spell in the same turn, every single turn. He is probably the better caster in the game, in my opinion.
I'm a nubbin' to PF2e, so I haven't run into this experience yet. Correct me if I am wrong in this summary: Your experience has been bad because saving throws are free, too easy for the enemy to succeed in making, and a success completely negates your character's action.
What would you recommend as a solution?
To me, I would think that most spells should still have some effect - if minimal - even if an enemy succeeds on a saving through. We already have some of this; Befuddle, for example, still applies a penalty even on a successful saving throw. It's minimal, sure, but . More spells - most, in fact - should operate this way.
And then what about metamagic, or a feat, or some ability that would give you a minimum one round of duration on a spell? That way you can sacrifice a resource to ensure some level of minimal effect. Or maybe a second chance at forcing the effect through. Example:
Determined Casting: You can recapture the magical energies that would otherwise be wasted when an enemy resists your spells. Once per day, after a target has succeeded against a saving throw from a spell you have cast, you can cast the same spell again on your next turn without expending a spell slot. The enemy suffers a penalty to their saving throw equal to half your level plus your key ability bonus. If you decide to do this, the target suffers no effects from the initial casting (even if there is an effect listed for a successful saving throw).
Some things like this, I think, could go a long way to helping fix the feeling of helplessness. It's a spell caster. A master of the arcane arts, able to bend reality itself. It should be difficult for someone to just say "meh, whatever dude."
small nitpick about #5 but things like Demoralize and Bon Mot exist to reduce enemy DCs, and are especially good on Charisma casters. Albeit you need to invest skill feats to get this going
This is exactly how I felt when I played a bard through AV. Anytime I tried to effect the enemies directly it was often just ignored. It got so bad that if I was wasting spells on a nonbuff or heal then I was really hurting the team.
@@TheJuicyTangerinethat's yet another action tax in addition to recall knowledge. And often it's probably a strong save if you are wanting to target it.
Speaking of Summon spells. I'm currently in an Abomination Vault game as a Evocation Wizard with the Staff Nexus thesis, and the first time I Summon Construct in the game it brought in an Animated Broom. Its bristle attack can cause an enemy to lose an action due to coughing from dust. Which it did against a big spider-like creature twice. Never underestimate what a summons can do.
Can spiders cough? o.O?
@@toodleselnoodos6738 Clogged spiracles is a serious problem for arachnids and insects.
As a Druid I used some summons early in game. The Unicorn was great for its level. But cant say I have had that many impactful summons other than placing it in a flanking spot, and that can be a lv 1 critter. The higher level I get, the less I use the summons.
@@skink84 Summons are good, they are swiss army knife spells. You really have to know your critters though. It's the variety that matters with it, not the simple damage output of the creature, also you want these spell to occupy one of the top slots to be effective against equal enemies. You can summon a constrictor snake to block a very mobile creature or ride a unicorn out of danger and having it help with healing magic. Being able to think quick and know your pokemon team is key.
"Bring a ranged weapon" he says. Good advice, generally. I definitely didn't spend this past Saturday building an absolutely stupid "psychic who fights with a greataxe" character. Optimal it is not. Hamburger he will become. But I can't wait to actually try it out.
Ya…I totally don’t have an Orc/Ardande Wild Patron Elementalist Witch with a Spirit Familiar and Greataxe…
While I have some issues with accuracy and trailing scaling, I think there is a game design flaw with casters that no one is really bringing up.
PF2e is a game about teamwork and every +1 mattering, and this works for character skill checks, martial attacks, & even caster attacks, but caster saves don't go with this.
What I mean is that you have item bonus, status bonus, circumstance bonus, enemy item penalty (non-existent), enemy status penalty, enemy circumstance penalty (basically only to AC), and rolling the dice.
These apply to skill checks and martial attacks, and caster attacks just drop the item bonus. Since item bonus is buying equipment, that's something you do yourself, no teamwork involved.
But any team could have a Bard or someone with the Marshal archetype to grant a status bonus, and that goes to martial and caster rolls.
Any team could use the Aid action + reaction to grant a circumstance bonus, and that goes to martial and caster rolls.
I've almost never been in a team that couldn't inflict frighten or another status penalty, and that goes to enemy rolls and what martials and casters need to hit.
Circumstance penalties are extremely common for AC, flanking and tripping, this primarily goes to martials but can go to casters as well.
Most team compositions can inflict multiple of these, and everyone can work together and share in achievements & victory by helping out.
Except for save spells, those are limited to enemy penalties, and only status penalty in practicality; in short, basically you can get 1 teammate to do teamwork for a save spell instead of everyone chipping in because there's no benefit unlike in the other areas where you can roll. And it's limited, yhea sure the One for All Swashbuckler could do Bon Mot for lowering the will save, but the intimidation barbarian can't help out if bon mot works.
And then there's the fact that you don't roll, I understand why, but not rolling dice in a game where you roll dice feels a bit bad. But mechanically it is an effective -1 due to Meets it Beats it.
I.E. if you made a spell attack roll against an enemy's Will DC, the die result which you get the lowest success, is the same result of the enemy succeeding their save against you when they roll a Will save against your Spell DC.
And another mechanical thing is that you can't affect the die such as using a Hero Point. There are a number of ways to affect a die to your favor, and Hero Points are common and for everyone, but fortune effects are easier to get for your attack rolls, than misfortune is for your enemy saving throws. I can't think of any, but there might be a few; but anyone can think of True Strike for this.
As a note, I'm aware that this is also a problem with Martial DCs. And I would want those to get the same treatment as Caster Spell DCs. Although I don't know what form it could take without being drastic to the PF2e action/feat economy.
Whereas there are ways for non-casters to emulate specific abilities of spells when considered in isolation, they often require some kind of investment like a good Skill, Skill Feat, other feat, Hero Point, etc. Plus, off the top of my head casters have pretty much exclusive access to a variety of things like Haste, Slow, Wall of Stone. Also, Fear is much more powerful than a Demoralize. Plus, of course, AoE effects like starting at 1st level.
Also, there's something to be said about the freedom to choose what you want to do, and adapt.
It's a higher skill floor, but it isn't without its benefits.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG Many of the strong spells are DC less, like Haste and Wall of Stone and as such are easy to cast for none casters. One dedication feat and that character is in at the same level with a scroll that can be used when it has the most impact, or if they wait 4 levels they can also have a slot for that same spell. And I think we all know that Slows effect is an outlier, just like the range of fireball.
And while Demoralize is 1 degree lower per success level than Fear, skills like intimidate that that target the very same saves are four levels ahead with 1-3+ item bonuses and sometimes feats that bump them even higher. At it's third rank Fear has the obvius benefit of emulating high level archetype feats that usually are restrictive in some way. That is not to mention the fact that Fear is repeatable, while intimidate only works ones.
I do think casters are fine, it is just a bit too easy to do magic with a marshal chassi. And maybe feats like Intimidating strike and Debilitating Shot that bypass the weaker class DCs of marshal characters applying conditions directly with weapon proficiency.
Saving throws come with effect on success, so it's normal they are harder to impact with malus. On this note, sickening is amazing, such is frightened. Yeah stuff like zombies will be immune to both but guess what, positive destroy those. Be smart
IMHO it all goes to how most DM will describes things. More will describe the kills more in details, giving physical details like your hit is so powerful that you slice the creature in half, while forgetting to bring in teamwork like recalling that the monster was so scared that he forgot everything about how to properly defends as the barbarian slides it in half(reminding that the fear spell was a reason for the critical hit in the first place). The impact of support actions is often forgotten in the narration and only the big hit is remembered.
I mean the biggest issue is that something being technically good and feeling good is different. Playing a caster and using spell attacks doesn’t feel good. Saves and AC are higher and you will be relatively lower.
You can flank or perform special aiming meta-magic or actions or wield runes for accuracy. So you will often spend two actions (or three with spell strike) and constantly miss or rarely crit if that’s how you want to play.
Also, though I’m sure those players exist, I’ve had about a dozen players and all of them hate the spell learning system where you have to learn everything at different levels unless they are signature. Hate it. What an unnecessary hassle. Kinda wish they just made it so that signature spells could maybe be heightened for cheaper, or meta-magic for free once per encounter.
I think we as a community have a habit of saying “oh it’s good under these conditions”, “git gud”, or “it’s not that bad” but then when other games are a bit messier but are actually more consistently satisfying for that fantasy we are shocked that more aren’t flocking over.
Exactly, thanks for pointing the distinction
Well said. Way too many caveats for how spellcasters can feel good.
yeah; Vancian casting is clunky, it is unfriendly to beginners and really exacerbates the early feeling for casters that they just can't do a lot.
for all of the horrible problems with 5E's magic and how broken and bloated the spell list is, and actual system itself is actually just superior to Pathfinder 2E. It's so simple, so intuitive and just fun to play around with. Here's my spells, here's my spell slots, I can mix and match my spells as I desire.
The ability to cast Shield 11 times is only problematic because Shield is a broken spell. It's a mistake, imho, to conflate the fact that so many 5E spells are overwhelmingly dominant choices with the fact that the system enables so much player agency and is easy to understand / fun to play with.
Summoning caster minions is effectively turning one spell slot into multiple. Yes, the individual spells won't be as strong, but it also allows a backline caster to cast two spells a turn.
I'm new to P2E. Hell, I'm.*published* in 5E D&D. I've long thought that 5E magic was too easy. A wizard, or even moreso, Sorcerer, can break an encounter with Metamagic.
Whereas I recognize that PF2E magic isn't as flashy, it CERTAINLY leans into the teamwork aspect of gameplay. Moreso, it can swing a battle where a simple alteration of AC or DCs in 5E couldn't.
I applaud your efforts, insights and comments. Thank you.
I look forward to some weird Fleshwarp Sorcerer or Witch in my future, manipulating events and combat.
As an aside, I do enjoy Glass Cannon, and have so for a couple of years now. PF2E, and now 2E, are not strangers, though I am only starting to play it as a newbie.
Thanks for all you do.
Honestly, I don't really get the "puppeteer" part when you talk about support casters. The effects of the buff/debuff spells are just not that apparent unless you watch every dice roll to see whether it landed exactly on the number where, say +1 from Heroism made a difference. And I'm not saying that effect is weak necessarily, I'm just saying that it requires quite some stretching to feel like a "puppeteer" in that case. If it was regarding 3.5e supportive spells, I'd agree, but something like Fear or Heroism - not really. Every +1 matters, but I wouldn't want to play the class with the entire identity of giving +1.
This is what I call "agency problem" when it comes to support. Giving Heroism or Magic Weapon to the Fighter is useful, but I think it's inherently a very passive action. You only get to see the impact if you monitor the dice as mentioned, and in the end - whether your spell actually affected the outcome now entirely depends on the Fighter's actions or decisions, and their dice rolls. Not even my dice rolls, although for debuffs you have to rely on them to even land the debuff in the first place.
You know what activity feels much more like being a puppeteer? Four Winds impulse. It has an immediate effect, it is not doing damage and might not even always useful, but it really seems to me like a "support" activity that would feel good to use every time I use it. Math fixer spells however... not so much.
My party as an air kineticist that has Flinging Updraft, they are great.
watching the dice for narrating when the +1 matters is literally the GM's role to narrate the rolls, and if they use Foundry VTT there is even a mod that highlites when they should narrate. Yes if they are not telling the melee that they would have missed if the bard had not held their hand and showed them how to hold their sword properly, then no difference may be noticed. Also the bard could also just declare they cast fighter and make sure to take credit for the hit reminding the fighter they would be nothing without their hand holding.
@@yarnevk and Fighter can reasonably reply that without him, his accuracy, his damage die and his positioning and decision making this attack wouldn't have happened at all.
Though I would say if this conversation is to happen at all, there's something wrong at the table. If this is required, then I think there's something wrong with the system if player enjoyment should come from "actually, that only happened because of me!"
There are lots of spells that screw with the opponent even on a success. You can definitely have a debuff/bfc type support caster.
The right spells in the right encounter is pretty powerful (relative to the design in the system). I've mentioned this before, but timing sucked for when I used grease against rat creatures. Our most recent session just ended mid combat, preventing an the possibility of a two front assault with me casting charm on a goblin guard, the mage hitting magic user with acid arrow, and me incidentally finishing the magic user with gust of wind (bludgeoning damage from crit fail) trying to clear the way for the fighter.
Just have to find the right spells with good "save & suck even with a success" and figure out which save to target (recall knowledge is great for this btw).
@@HaibaneKuu Sure, the table CAN argue about who's MVP but unless they're doing so all in good fun and the "winner" of the argument doesn't matter then you're gonna have a miserable time playing with that group no matter what system you're playing.
Our first 2E party has a witch as the sole caster, which is a class that Reddit has deemed to be on the weaker side.
Our witch is awesome. Constantly debuffing enemies, or throwing out soothes, while invisible. He’s also the main source of CHA skills in our party.
This is a very valid and awesome mode to play and is fun if this is what you want. This does not take aaay from the the fact that you cannot do the opposite as effectively. Your witch cannot eschew all his soothes and debuffs and try to vomit swarm or other attacks spells and be effective. The beef is that the system pushes you to be one and makes being the other next to impossible.
The system requires COLLABORATION wether you play a caster or a martial. No fighter is going to solo an hard encounter, and the same is FORTUNATELY TRUE for casters as well. Your beef with the system seems to be that casters cannot “win the game” alone like they could in 3rd Ed and PF1 (but also 5th Ed)
@@neurolancer81 Yeah and if I play a barbarian, I can't buff and heal my allies.
The classes don't all do everything. Great job noticing that.
@@neurolancer81 idk how you define effective, but casters have access to aoe damage, persistent damage, and damage of way more types than most martials do.
If you want to make a single target blaster, they will be similar to a ranged martial character, and both will fall short of a melee character. That doesn’t make casters weak at blasting, and it’s definitely not impossible like you say… It’s just not OP like 5e.
1:05:10 Illusory creature does not have your defense scores. It uses your Spell DC as its defense scores, which is much better.
Thanks! WIll add to my pinned errata
Preface: I'm a Witch lover. I fuckin' *love* that class, even with some of its flaws. Am currently enjoying playing a Druid in my Exctinction Curse game, and having quite a bit of fun with Gunslinger in a ported-over Hell's Vengeance.
I think a lot of people would be quite satisfied if the current incarnation of True Strike/Sure Strike was removed in its entirety and spell attack roll math was redone in accordance. It's literally unacceptable that ALL attack roll spells are balanced in accordance with *a single 1st level spell* that not even all casters can have access to. Look, I get it, advantage is cool and all - rolling two dice feels powerful - but the fact that it warps the math enough that ALL casters are assumed to have it and the spell attack roll math is cut for it is more than a little silly. It's literally stifling the ability for attack roll spells to shine at all.
Remove True Strike/Sure Strike as it is. Allow casters who want to focus on blasting an item akin to a Gate Attenuator. Maybe it scales a level or two slower to help Kineticist keep their Impulse Attack Roll niche, or maybe it only affects LEVELED spells to keep cantrip spamming from out DPSing ranged martials (not really a big issue imo but that's another discussion). That would go a long way, really, and you wouldn't even have to mess with the Spell DC scaling. Attack Roll spells must be treated like save-or-suck spells, because that's what they are - you miss and you get nothing. Save spells are balanced around Success and Failure being the most common outcomes, and that I can accept since Successes typically have effects, though minor. Attack roll spells unfortunately don't get that luxury, and a lot of them are kinda... boring, to boot, being JUST damage. I would *absolutely* trade away some of the damage from these spells for more interesting effects on-hit rather than just relegating cool effects to crits. More Murderous Vines and Briny Bolts, less Scorching Rays and 4th level Chromatic Rays.
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Another issue that gets brought up is the fact that, while casters have ample (some might even say TOO many) options to help martials and each other, there's really not that many ways for Martials to reciprocate other than "deal more damage so the enemies die quicker".
Bon Mot only helps with Will save spells. Frightened 1 is the most common positive occurrence from Demoralize and only lasts until the end of the enemy's next turn, making it fiddly sometimes (especially since they're immune to your attempts afterwards). Clumsy is only available from a Rogue feat that affects Debilitating Strikes off the top of my head, and there's like next to nothing to affect Fort saves that I can remember (would love to be shown some if they exist). Like, really? Being *prone* or *restrained* doesn't give you a malus to Reflex saves? Gunslinger's Called Shot is *really* cool because it can inflict Enfeebled, or Stupefied, or -10 foot Speed, or make flying things fall (with no save, DAYUM), but that's an exception that proves the rule.
It really damages the whole "teamwork makes the dream work" argument when only one side gets all the teamwork tools to help the other side. It also doesn't help that martials are somewhat pressured into speccing into specifically Charisma *because* Bon Mot and Demoralize are so useful for everyone in the party, not just themselves, so "more optimal" martials look a little more samey.
Martials should have more ways to help casters. Even if they're binary saves, it doesn't matter if it's repeatable. Bash the shield into his leg to make him Clumsy 1 for a a round, punch him in the kidney to give him a -1 to Fort saves, stuff like that. (This also has the benefit of giving more uses to the oft-ignored Class DC of Martials)
We keep bringing up that factual point and keep being told we're powerhungry drama queens. Balanced around True Strike or not, the point about spell attack is very valid. The math is there, there is nothing to argue about. I for one would be much happier with True Strike being a once per 10 mins per target thing and spell attack being brought back in line with the rest of the whole system. That alone would have a decent impact on how casters play.
Casters are not "weak". They were brought in line as they very much needed to be. They just feel bad to play in the system. Remember when martials needed to do fullrounds? That's how it feels with blaster casters now. It was bad design then and it still is now. I think the examples given in the video do more to highlight the shortcomings than they do to show it "works". They literally burn everything to do good for one combat. Your damaging spells scaling with spell rank means most will compete for top slots, who also have their own great non-damaging spells you or your party would want to use. It's not that casters are rng, it's past that. The rng doesnt dictate if you do great as much as if you simply keep up.
In another vein, I personally think Sorcs make for the most consistant and fun blasters in the current system. Signature spells mean you nearly always have something that works to upcast. Otherwise, you are often better served just memorizing a bunch of Magic Missiles. Maybe Vancian casting is showing its age?
@@Myrdraall I've always believed it's simply not possible to create a balanced, feels-good "blasting" class with a purely Vancian caster, mostly for the fact that *it's impossible to dictate how many encounters per day every table has.*
Even in 2e, if you only have a couple encounters per day, you can be content just throwing out leveled spells nearly every turn, feeling pretty good and powerful, unless you *really* fucked up your prep that day.
Conversely, if a table has, like, 10 encounters in a day or more, even the most well-organized and research-using wizard will feel stifled, at early levels having to go entire encounters without casting a leveled spell unless it's deemed "necessary".
Hell, even at the same table, the encounters per day can change, wildly changing how powerful a pure-Vancian caster is by-day. Some days you'll be a nuke, flinging all your spells and making martials jealous, and other days you'll wish you had picked up runes for your trusty crossbow or coat pistol. That design ethos just *is not* built for blasting. It is best used, as has been shown time and again, for a toolbox playstyle, and trying to use a pure Vancian caster for a blaster is going to be fitting a square peg in a round hole, regardless of which side of the spectrum you're on for numbers of encounters. That's just the nature of being focused around all-day abilities that you have to choose.
And you know what? That's fine, I think. It's okay that some classes prefer a toolbox playstyle over others. I don't think Vancian casting is "showing its age" moreso that people are finally realizing what its limitations are when casters aren't allowed to do dumb shit that make their limitations meaningless. Part of it *is* player expectation, and part of it is Paizo needing to *manage* that player expectation.
Sorcerer and modified Vancian casters like Magus and classes that are caster-like such as Kineticist show me that they want to give us damage-focused magic classes, but also realize this similar limitation in pure Vancian casting. I think if they ever want to lean into being more aggressive with spells on, say, WIzard, or Witch, with Patrons or Curriculum, the Focus Spells tied to them need to feel good.
Of course, all of this doesn't mean that there still aren't things that can be smoothed-out about Vancian casters, as has been talked about. I will say there are plenty of voices spoiling the conversation, and I think that this video is more for them than us. Because we understand casters aren't bad, they just have flaws, like plenty of classes.
Nitpick: @13 : The barbarian is listed to do 21 damage on both scenarios, but it should be 22 on the "improved scenario". (also 57.5 on a crit).
This is an 90% increase of average damage dealt.
Hark! Ronald, you are a superstar of this community. Your content is always helpful, engaging and thorough. I follow many amazing PF content creators, but you have been the shining star at my table and have been a tremendous help for our transition to PF2e. Diving into the comments, particularly Reddit from what I've seen, really saddens me when I see people leaving ungrateful, irredeemably mean, or otherwise not constructive comments in response to your passion for and dedication to the community. You handle it with grace that's beyond me. Truly, your AC and saving throws are legendary. I hope you know how important you are to this community. You rock!
Heightens slow is where it really starts to shine. When targeting a group of enemies there's always a good chance that at least one enemy crit fails it and slowed 2 means that it's not going to be doing much for the remainder of the fight.
As a bard I like to combine it with dirge of doom, frighten the enemy to lower their save then hit them with level 6 slow.
I'm kinda sad that you didn't mention soothe, but I guess it's just a less flexible version of the heal spell for occult spellcasters.
Soothe is interesting because it’s a healing spell that doesn’t have the positive trait.
@@elsewhereprince3969 It has it's own niche because of that and the mental defense buff. I don't think the not having the positive trait is relevant unless you have some weird party composition like having undead allies/party members. But it does give the spell it's own flavour compared to the heal spell. Clerics/druids heal/turn undead. Bards soothe.
It kinda sounds like rather than True Strike (Sure Strike) being brought into other casters, it should be rebalanced to be less of an auto-pick (perhaps a +1 status bonus to attack and +2 when heightened) or other 1-action spells that modify attacks in other ways should be added so there's choice (-2 status penalty to attack but it targets two things, etc.). If you're at range (which you generally are as a caster), then any daily spell slot spell with an attack roll should always be preceded by True Strike, by the sounds of it. Obviously this doesn't apply to saving throw spells (so more supportive casters).
Just get rid of it.
The issue with that is that True Strike is turned into a status bonus, which could be given to you by a Martial with the Marshal archetype, or a bard using inspire courage, or someone casting heroism on you, etc. AKA, a spell and action cost on something that another party member would likely give you or multiple party members already.
I think they should get rid of it and replace it with runes for spell casters.
@@neurolancer81 Lets forget about runes and just give us the same proficiency as martials.
@@lavabomba yeah this was specifically my point. It makes it a non-mandatory spell and instead is an alternate for those other effects; more things providing the "same" buff so more options and less requirements.
About equipment, in my experience players don't like to spend money on consumables very much, they do of course but not that much.
In my group, I’ve noticed that consumables are more often crafted than they are purchased.
Most of the recommended items in this video are permanent items
I agree that cooperation is the key to win some encounters in PF2e. I think Clerics and Bards works well and they support the martial beacause they have powers, like Bard compositions of Cleric's Font of Life, that do the job without consuming spell slots. My problems is with the Wizard, The Witch or the Oracle: in my opinion they are really underpowered. In PF2, if you buff or heal the party, magic is adequate but if you need to deal damage, control the terrain or debuff, there are only a few useful. In my opinion, in PF2, if you are a passive caster, so you don't have to deal with the enemy directly, you can do a nice job. But, if you hope to deal damage or debuff an enemy, especially a Boss, you'll feel powerless: your spell attack roll will be very low, you defenses will be awful, your Spell DC will not keep up with the martials characters.
Yes this is what I've been saying. People keep hyper focusing on a partial aspect but it's the whole offense part that doesn't feel good. I played a bard through AV and it was awful if I tried to do anything but buff or heal.
Definitely get the "linear fighter vs quadriatic wizard" problem. But, dang, whenever I assess spellcasters, I see that players of these classes have to do a lot more work, know a lot more rules, generally contribute a lot more to the table (helping others with rules because they had to study them), than those who pick simpler classes to play. I have sympathy and desire to reward those players, and therefore tend to think there should be a power gap of some degree (even a bit more than "but they have more options"). So the idea that PF2 casters are nerfed and shine less than martial bothers me. Players already have to put more effort into playing casters. This has been my #1 reluctance to give PF2 a spin.
That's a fair criticism, but consider that players who already DO have a great degree of system mastery now get free perks/more power just for doing something they already planned to do. If you are fine with that, than enjoy. I'd instead encourage streamlining of caster system mastery. Remind other players that they can/should use recall knowledge or try to debuff targets with their skill actions so casters don't have to do all that themselves. Reward players that help others at your table with hero points instead of math modifiers or bonus spell slots, etc. Caster players don't "have" to do a lot more work than other PCs. They just gain a potential advantage if they do. Mostly, that advantage is situational solutions, not raw power increases. Keeping to the CRB for example will allow for plenty of power, utility and versatility, without an overwhelming hundreds of spells to chose from.
the worst game design is hard=best/better
They are rewarded. They "bring a lot more to the table".
Final Sacrifice is pretty nice on a witch since your familiar comes back every daily prep, getting access to fireball at that low of a level can save you sometimes
And manifold missile wands are just always fun!
You want to be a turret? Got two hands? Got two turns? Become the turret with 2 actions free of missiles for the next 9 rounds.
I love playing support characters in games.
I generally find them very satisfying :)
This was great. I'm glad that you linked to Gortle's guide, which I use for all my characters.
Incapacitation, if it instead gave +5 to the target's save instead of directly adjusting their degree of success (+10 equivalent) would be helpful. At the moment, you're either hunting for spells during character creation where it feels like the designer forgot to include Incapacitation, or where the effect on success is so strong that you don't care.
I actually tried to homebrew it with a sliding scale (Monsterlevel-Spelllevel)/2 rounded down. So if you use a level 1 spell on a lv 20 monster they still get a massive bonus (20-1)/2=9.5 rounded down = +9
but it doesn't make those spells completely useless. (Esp. Low-mid-tier)
I've always thought turning crit fails to fails for higher level monsters would be better for incapacitation spells.
@@trafalgarla I think that's way too crass. Also why would a lv20 monster be as good as a lv3 monster at resisting a lv1 spell.
As spells are highly dependant on crit effects and spells have already low crit chance this just means inc spells shouldn't ever be taken, at low levels as they are only good for about 3 sessions or so. (Unless you constantly heighten them, which may also not be what you want.
@@trafalgarla also the issue is that you also turn fails into successes and successes into crit successes (unless I misunderstood how incapacitation works)
Edit: Just reread the incap. And yes incap saves get turned one degree better, which is like a +10 on any space against an incap spell. If they don't want incap effects, why even include them.
@@keit99 The designers DO want incapacitation effects in the game, just not from low level spells against higher level opponents. Using a level 1 spell to nearly autowin against a level 6 or less monster was a thing you could do in PF1. More importantly, monsters often have innate spells. If you throw several lower level enemies against a party, and they all cast sleep, color spray, etc, they could decimate a party thanks to attrition rolls. Ensuring that no PC above double the level of the spell can ever earn a critical failure thanks to incapacitation is a good thing and working as designed.
I feel like the worst thing about spellcasters is the fantasy. I only play spellcasters because all my friends hate them and i also love them. But where martials can come up with concepts and choose a class and weapons that fit in, while aways being pretty useful in combat, casters give you different ways to cast the same optimized spells. The spell list is so vast, but most of the combat spells are pretty bad. The worst part is the spell system, you need to be prepared to the situations you will face and then boom, something out of plans happens and some of your limited resources you assigned at your daily preparations are wasted. Meanwhile spontaneous casters need to take the same optimized heightned spells to use in different spell slots, cause everything else would make them feel useless when they spend their limited resources just to get the enemy succeed at the saving throw even though it's his lowest save.
It's so hard and restrictive to play a spellcaster right when compared to a martial, and so more punishing to waste your resources. You are bond to spells that have efects at enemy sucess, buffs and spells without saving throws. Martial can unga and bunga, get big numbers and be happy. Casters need to go through all the mental gymnastics to be a hype man or setup a combo, fail a save and just feel like a dead weight. That's the feeling i had multiple times through my first two campaings.
But i'm not giving up on being a caster, i get what their strenghts are and am trying to play around them. Just wanted to be more independent and able to hit spell attacks. I apologize if any part of my comment has bad grammar, i'm not a native english speaker. Would love to be able to discuss the points i tried to raise and discuss ways to house rule some things without trying to take the martials place as damage dealers.
Been running a small campaign as gm with my wife and oldest son as the players. It's our first time with Pathfinder for all of us, and these videos are very helpful to us three newbies!
The first reddit post listed "ALL casters can easily grab dangerous sorcery at level 4" as an advantage, which is ridiculous. You would have to forego 2 class feats and you're locked into the sorcerer dedication for another feat even if there's nothing else you want. If you were a wizard at level 4 with dangerous sorcery you gave up so many options like reach or widen spell, just to get a little more damage to be on par with a ranged martial character.
1) Free archetype exists and it's pretty widely used out there
2) Casters usually don't have really important or impactfull feats early on, so the 2 feat cost might be worth it, depending on the build
@@vehemetipolygoniae2197 You are completely ignoring the fact that its not a normal class progression as apart of every single casters line-up. If you want to do *anything* else with your character at this low level and not have it be like this you are forced to use that free archetype on it, and 2 feats.
Why does my characters Character, or wants a player suffer so my character can be *kinda* better at dealing damage. This is assuming that you have Free Archetype at all which then makes it even more of an investment. Why is it as the OP was lightly implying almost mandatory for you to waste 3 full feats on every caster to spec into one very specific thing to make you slightly more consistent at something?
For literally any other scenario it would be looked at like it is, which is ridiculous. A ranger can survive and do well and not have to take some mandatory thing even within his own class because he can choose any which way to play his class and come out on top, be it ranged, bows, crossbows, swords, sneaky, focus spells, etc.
Sorry if this is a bit hostile but its not intended to just that this seems very dismissive and missing the point of the fellas above comment.
@@SpookyScarySkeletor
I mean that's fair, but it just seems like a small inconvenience to me. Agree to disagree i guess
I'm just getting into Pathfinder (coming from 5e and 3.5e) and when I read Recall Knowledge I didn't get a sense that it told you statistics (low saves, etc.) at all. From what I gather, it tells you things like "Goblins are incredibly rash individuals and will act unpredictably", or on a critical success a bit more specific things about their actual combat abilities; in the Goblin example, maybe "Goblins are exceptionally nimble and can take a step if another Goblin moves next to them".
As you mention in the video, errata/revisions (or more clarity) to this action would be nice. For now I will do as you suggest and add "noting statistical outliers" as a thing Recall Knowledge can do.
Thats because it doesnt at most tables.
Since the players use a precious action, I ask the player if they want a specific piece of info (like the weakest defense), or something I think they would benefit knowing (like it has a 3 action powerful attack). My players use RK pretty often because of this I think.
@@dji7732 That's giving them the critical success effect on a regular success I think.
Recall Knowledge has lots of table variance, unfortunately.
The general guidelines for GMs are to provide the most well known piece of information about the creature when you successfully ID them-CRB p 506. The example provided is a troll's regeneration and it being disabled by fire/acid, or a Manticore's tail spike. Many creatures, especially humanoids like goblins, etc, don't have a prominent feature that fits that example. So for many, the most notable, predictable facet of a goblin is probably either that they are fairly simple minded creatures (read lower will saves) that are easy to manipulate or excite, or that they are particularly slippery foes, that are practiced at darting between their foes' legs when there are many of them (read as scuttle, high Ref, or decent stealth/acrobatics).
That leaves GMs with a lot of latitude. What is the most prominent feature if they have more than one. How you describe that feature could lead to several conclusions (save modifier, tankiness, whether they have a special ability). Some leave the results vague, yet narrative ("Trolls are hard to kill, but deathly afraid of fire") and others are specific.
"You don't understand. We're not complaining about damage. We're complaining about our lower rate of gaining proficiency. Talking about going after the enemy's weakest saves or damage is strawmanning the argument." - People in comment sections to you.
Looking at the Gamemastery Guide...
The AC of monsters are Extreme to Low. The difference between the Extreme and Low is 6 (decreases by 2 each step). This difference is consistent between all monster levels.
The saving throws of monsters are Extreme to Terrible. The difference between Extreme and Terrible is 9 to 14. This difference increases as the monsters gain levels.
The difference between Extreme AC and Extreme saving throws is 8 or 9. This difference remains stable throughout all monster levels.
The difference between High AC and High saving throws is 7 to 9. This difference increases as the monsters gain levels.
The difference between Moderate AC and Moderate saving throws is 9 to 12. This difference increases as the monsters gain levels.
The difference between Low AC and Low saving throws is 9 to 12. This difference increases as the monsters gain levels.
Moderate and Low saving throws keep pace with their AC counterparts when you factor in the +1, +2, and +3 potency runes the martial characters will be having. Extreme and High saving throws lose pace with their AC counterparts, even before you factor in potency runes. Having offensive spells which target multiple saving throws is a requirement, no monster will have all three of their saving throws in the "high" tier without having a bad AC. The trick, as you say, is targetting the weak saves.
In D&D 5e.. as there are multiple saves (6)... targetting the weak saves is pretty easy. Especially since the weak saves are pretty bad... as they don't have a "proficiency" in them so they just use their ability score modifier. So, players coming from 5e to PF2e will find their spells being resisted a bit more often. That might be part of the issue.
As you've said, it takes more effort to be an effective caster-blaster in PF2e than in other systems people may be more familiar with.
"Ze healing is not as rewarding as ze hurting"
*flashback to WoW days" When the DPS pulls before the tank and blame the healer for dying.
I think medic tf2 is really the mindset you have to have while healing
"I HEAL THE MAN THAT WILL KILL YOU!"
I hope that you cover the limited prepared spells - I feel that if a prepared caster (wizard) has perfect configuration for a day and decides to use all his spells in one battle then he should be able to outcompete other classes in this one battle. Then he should be not too useful for the rest of the day - while somebody like kineticist can blast for the whole day.
But now onto the watching :)
Going all out in one battle is a huge plus for casters, you’re so right. They have the limited resources, which means if they save them for the boss fight, they will be increasingly effective! Tactical planning like that is a option the martials don’t usually have.
AAA Battery's posts are awesome, he pretty much mathed everything I always felt and tought about casters without mathing it out.
Ronald, I have to push back on the recall knowledge. RAW you do not get save information from Recall Knowledge. So many people repeat this line it’s obnoxious. As a caster, you are forced to use meta knowledge to guess which save is lowest.
Yeaaah, it's just about the only thing in the system which is entirely left up to the GM. Having to ask what information it gives in combat is sometimes daunting when the GM wishes to keep some of their trump cards.
Also even with that if you fail your recall that's it, no more checks. Or of course, when a mindless creature's lowest save is will, that's usually pretty useless information.
A lot of the "casters are perfectly fine" argument boils down to: "Casters are fine if your GM interprets the rules this way and designs encounters such that they work well for the party build", which is something Ronald seems to miss a lot. Run things strictly RAW and play adventure paths and things start to suck.
@@JohnQDarksoulOnly in PFS. GMs can always change things.
@davidbowles7281 Right, but… if it’s a thing the GM has do, it’s not a feature of the system but a common patch. The GM can patch whatever they like but the useful conversation is to do with RAW, imho.
Sounds like they need to take true strike out of the game so actual fixes can be implemented.
The game designers have said publicly that all caster accuracy math assumes you have true strike active lmao.
@@-ring-a-ding-my-dingalingSo take it out. Thats a terrible assumption.
@@davidbowles7281 agreed.
Just make true strike a metamagic feat; cowards
@@zebeevNo I dont think 5E advantage should be anywhere in this game.
To add to Healing, unlike DND, the last hitpoint matters way more due to the Wounded condition. Edit: Mixed Wounded and Doomed up. Doomed is something different but similar to Wounded.
Thankfully the local PFS players value support characters, unfortunately it's been basically impossible to convince most of them to delay their turn for buffs
Most players value support classes. The question is do they respect or want to play them?
@@jbark678 I tend to go out of my way to make them, in part to show what they're capable of :D But also because there's a large group of people that just want to swing a big stick and not deal with the complexities of a support build. Even the non-caster support builds. (eg. rogues built around debilitating strike)
Whenever I run PF2 I get a whole party of support casters and no one who will hit things with a stick.
Wanna do an exchange?
I love casters, but I'm not convinced that a +1 matters more than another fighter flanking... It's a better bonus and more chances to attack. I keep hearing the math benefits having casters and martials, but I'm just not seeing it in practice 🙃
@@JawaBob it's all about those crits. PF2 isn't about hitting and missing. You're going to get hit no matter what, and in Moderate or higher encounters you're going to be missing a lot while getting hit hard. It's all about mitigating crits so you don't go down too quickly. That's why +1 matter. But it's also why casters benefit more from utility than straight numbers. Casters can destroy enemy action economy, preventing a lot of incoming damage. And because it's usually multi-target, it's often far more effective than straight damage dealing.
Thank you for talking about the flexible casting, it's one of my greatest misgivings about moving back to PF and I never knew it existed. I'll be trying that out for sure!
Well, just watch the video, and in general it says: casters can be good BUT only for people who don't mind being horseshued to buffbot supports with utility. Which is absolutely the root of the "rebellion" in the first place. Well, my take is this: there's no point to constantly bring up how weak blasters are in the mix team. It's just facts, and nothing will change until devs change their mind or simply doesn't change at all. So, i have an advice for people like me. who like the idea of powerfull caster, and want to play casters in general - but upset how clunky they are in PF2. Look at your party: if half or more people considering playing spellcasters - do your thing, you definetely have a blast playing. If, however, it seems you will be the only caster - just switch to martial you like the most. That way - you will have maximum fun in the majority of your games, and that is what ultimately matters the most
Fighter is great at single target damage, Taking Damage Debuffs with frightening, Control with Improved Knockdown and Combat Grab. And can target AC, Fortitude, Reflex, or Will with different effects. And without resource costs round after round. They really are the Yes And class.
Yeah, it's great to have them as a baseline so every other martial has something to specialize into
Like Champions with better armor proficiency and insane damage mitigation, Rangers/Rogues/Gunslingers with better perception, slingers/inventors/alchs with aoe, and so on.
Fighter is good at some things, great at others, but not by so much it invalidates other martials.
Something to note about Summon spells. They scale horribly (minion level wise) because many higher level summonable creatures have spells of their own. The first turn 3-action summon can be painful, but then for 1 action sustain you turn that into a 2-action spell via your summoned minion (assuming the spell to be cast is not equal or higher level than the minion and it just winks out of existence). This is especially good when they have access to spells you normally don't such as Heal (or Harm for undead characters) on an arcane caster or buffs like Enlarge which don't require sustaining the spell. Enemy math has higher DCs than player math, so even minions that are quite lower in level than the party can still have spell DCs that are... okay enough. Being a cleric and using a 5th level animate undead to summon an undead mage for instance, turns three actions + 1 action sustains into casts of Enlarge (for the party martial) followed by some turns of magic missile and lightning bolt and harms until the enemies destroy the minion. The lower spell DC and limited spell rank may not compare to your own casts, but you use the summon to essentially fit in 3rd level spells for 1 action while you still have 2 actions to cast your own! This is doubly effective for Warpriests who might not have good spell DCs or even prepare blasting spells to begin with!
I’ve been exploring “gishier” caster (specifically the Wild Witch using Spirit Guide specific familiar). I’m experimenting using Elementalist now with the new RoE content and Wild Witch is actually the more interesting option (vs. Winter) because it retains Summon Animal/Plant&Fungus which adds some versatility for that lower INT.
Thankfully it’s solo experimentation, so I can mess around with these 5-action turns without bogging down other people’s times.
Just leveled up to third level sorc & retrained one of my 1st level spells to Gust of Wind. First encounter with it: Wizard acid arrowed an npc magic user. Magic user & wizard block entrance. I cleared the entrance with Gust of Wind. Npc magic user also crit failed, so the extra bit if damage on top of the acid damage knocked her out as well.
Good video even for experienced casters coming off a similar philosophy (I've always been an advocate of "use as few slots as possible to get the most advantage", even in d&d).
when you realize the divine spell
list has like, almost none of the “best”/“strong” spells. lol. 😂
Here is my general list of divine spells that I get use out of, some might be gm dependent like Comprehend language.
Shield
Heal
Fear
Sanctuary
Comprehend language
Faerie Fire(vs invis)
Inner Radiance Torrent(best Reflex save for us, hell this is the strongest damage spell for us and I am afraid they will nerf it because it is our only good damage spell)
Roaring Appuaplse
Show the way
Sixteen minutes in or so - Yes, being a "support" character can be essential to the team, but it feels bad when you're not allowed to do anything else of meaning to the group in combat and/or outside of combat to compensate. It's a "group fun" thing. I had a player who insisted that my cleric was there just to make his kamikaze style viable so the team did not end in a TPK every single combat... then insisted on taking the lead (or being overly-vocal) on every other facet of the game. I told him to convert to my god (which he couldn't/wouldn't), so I said "no healing" and became a versatile battle tank in my own right with the option of an amazing number of incredible utility spells that proved way more valuable than being a wet nurse. The Paladin in my group stepped up to provide heals so we could survive. I softened my stance after a while, but not until proving my worth and knocking him down a peg.
Thank you for this video -- it feels like I've been waiting forever for this one to come out.
I feel like the "target lowest saves" is one of the lies that exist for casters. Lets forget that you actually have to use turn to know their lowest save, or even you must that spell prepared.
1st level Cleric really has no reflex saves that they can even use. What spells do you expect a Cleric(or divine caster) to actually use? There really isn't one.
These videos always assume that you have extensive meta knowledge, your spells prepared with actual future sight and that the DM isn't using boss monsters. Which all never happen in actual play.
Let's also not forget that "Recall Knowledge" is also a terribly worded rule and the result changes from GM to GM. There are also *specific* class feats that enable you to find out the lowest save, weaknesses, etc., like Combat Reading for Bard and Battle Assessment for Rogue. These will succeed more often than a Recall Knowledge check, and are precisely worded, whereas Recall Knowledge is not. However, once you know the lowest save, the enemy is still far more likely to succeed on their save than fail it.
i played a bard from 5 till 12th level. my mind changed on the casting portion of his kit multiple times through the campaign. like i never really specced into aoe but i had powerful and crippling diables, slow, 3rd level fear, phantasmal killer etc. and it went off at times even against the final book boss. my team had 2 summoners a gunslinger a fighter and a barb. So i was the perfect thing they were missing. I will likely play some kind of blaster next time i try it
Always carry a weapon: you may run into a foe who will negate your magic.
Let me just get up from the back...
*shuffles to the front*
"Stop calling Kineticist a spellcaster they don't have actual spells, just spell like abilities its false advertising buddy" (not saying its a bad class, it actually looks fun haven't gotten to try it yet, but I hate the advertising as a spellcaster and disappointment in not having spells)
Personally I want to have magic and be able to use a weapon, dnd simply makes that more viable. Pathfinder wants to make me specialize too much. Also I hate vancian casting and cannot take flexible caster with magus (have also not tried magus for this express reason, I have played sorcerer almost exclusively because I don't want to use vancian)
Personally I play a sorcerer currently in one game and a fighter in another (i have also briefly played a rogue with summoner dedi). My sorcerer is a great blaster and absolutely pulls the most damage of the group early on when he his hitting well with his attacks. But he also requires more learning and work to stretch his spells throughout the day.
They act like spells though.
"Abilities that restrict you from casting spells (such as being polymorphed into a battle form) or protect against spells (such as a spell that protects against other spells or a creature's bonus to saves against spells) also apply to impulses."
This is about 80% of the situations that will come up in combat with spellcasting. They even use a separate DC and attack rolls just like spells do.
Call a tomato a fruit, because sure, by a botanical definition, it is. But you put it in a salad with vegetables because culinarily it's treated like a vegetable.
Another plus point for needle darts is that it specifically calls them out as being made from metal in your possession, so carry a few silver coins and you have an ad hoc way to target stuff like silver weakness (when you're not doing something more valuable with your turn) (also applies to other special material metals).
You could also buy a simple silver ring or bracelet, which you can also use on the spell. And to my knowledge, you could also have like a cold iron ring/bracelet, or even adamantine, and the spell would then do cold iron, or adamantine, damage.
I wonder if there could be a place for spells like Horizon Thunder Sphere and Innter Radiance Torrent but being buff spells instead, something extremely powerful but taked 2 rounds to fully cast, that could warrant the party falling back to cover for the caster before reengaging stronger than ever
Nope, by the way they are nerfing Inner Radiance Torrent because it scales to high/
@@richarddarma1452 I only know of that one forum post from years ago where they said they were looking into it but never actually did, has there been more recent news?
I swear if you use the Maze clip again, I'm going to... not like and subscribe and ring a bell.
EDIT: of course
At level 15 you’ll finally be able to disable an enemy for a turn or two using a daily resource!
Don’t worry about the Barbarian critting and deleting enemies with an at-will action.
Going to be hard to find another instance of playing support feeling strong. This one is terribly acted already.
I think that the complaint against caster classes is that even if debuffing is powerful players find it lacking in fun they want a glass cannon build that feels like “great risk great reward” kind of build. They want to be able to go nova with the risk of burning out. A class design in trpg that does not allow a common trope or fantasy is kind of meh.
The but they have better saves they have better utility…. They don’t want that. They want the option to lower all their defenses (high risk) for max output (reward).
They want big boom moments they don’t want good average damage, they want a setup for big numbers like for example burning x spellslots for double damage but if they fumble they get stunned or hurt themselves.
Because gambling and pushing your luck IS fun :)
After playing a wizard for some time, I'd only arrive to the conclusion that spellcasting classes ( or at least wizards, druids, sorcerers , bards : the spellcasting classes we actually tested) are only competitive as an archetype to a martial class - The other way around is obviously not true-. That's simply because the tools of your trade ( your spells) are considerably more taxed ( you have to spend more actions per activity)/ limited ( you make less damage per round on an average round)/ conditioned ( areas too big to be useful most of the time, poor spell attack -with no runes to improve- the incapacitating trait...) than the tools of martial classes ( their weapons). Moreover, your base qualities ( spell dc/attacks) are usually below the comparable qualities of most martials, and your defenses are on average sub par.
Can you do the antithesis of this video.. how to not play a caster? Basically the spells that are not good to pick or the spells that most people pick and then realize they don't like and throw away later? I know there are spells like that out there..
I don't know that your suggestion would be a great topic for a video. There are a LOT of spells that aren't worth picking for your limited options. Even many of those ARE valuable though when you include them as a scroll or part of a staff. I would suggest that most of the spells that are truly "terrible" are obvious, and can usually be seen as best for NPCs to improve their daily productivity or happiness.
Except that there is a factual mathematical inconsistency that was already highlighted 5 YEARS AGO during the playtest. Casters' can't flank, can't apply potency runes, their proficiency scales slower and saves win on a tie. If those were aligned with the rest of the whole system, there would be no conversation around caster power, good or ill. The proficiency scaling alone would fix most of it. They don't want to do more damage, they just want to not be crit resisted over half the time.
Spell attack rolls require the same skillset as those of a ranged martial. This makes them, from a skill standpoint, harder to deal with, as that is an entirely different set of mechanics. Additionally, you have to learn how to bring what you have magic-wise into play; being Invisible ultimately helps your spell attack rolls by making the baddie flat-footed.
It is harder to blast as a spellcaster with spell attacks because you have to learn multiple rules and will still be behind the martials even then.
It really seems like Ron likes to choose the strawman side of an argument and then make an hour long video rebutting it.
@@JohnQDarksoul you want to have at least a 60 ish percent chance of your spell even hitting something? You just wanna be better than a fighter bro.
They can't flank, but neither can ranged martials and both still benefit from off-guard. They don't get potency runes, but auto-scaling cantrips and focus spells and higher spell slots. Proficiency scales slower, but they can pick their target save. Nothing new here...
@@willemgeertphaff1235 Yes, exactly how it should be if the numbers worked. They just dont. It's that simple. Cantrips scale to mirror Striking runes, but they're still 3 to 6 to-hit behind non-fighters. You can pick your save, but a lot of creatures have high saves across the board compared to your class DC, if you happen to have one of the right spells left in your limited slots anyway. If you look at a chart of what you need to hit an average creature, you'll see that it is by design quite constant for martials, but for some reason varies wildly for casters throughout their progression. The math is slightly off, and in a game where a +/-1 can equal 10-20%, it gets quite noticeable, that's all there is to it.
Great video, I keep it!
My wife coming from pf1 complained about how her sorcerer wasn't as strong as she'd expect.
I have some tips now ^^
Thank you for this! I've just started playing my first Pathfinder 2e game, as a bard (since I love bards in 5e). We've only got a party of three; me, a fighter and a rogue, so I'm kinda trying to cover as many casting bases as I can. Inspire Courage is great, and I can't wait for a big boss so my magic weapon spell can shine on our fighter's sword. Plus, last session I used a ghost sound cantrip before initiative to scare a bunch of goblins with the sound of a couple of dogs barking and growling. I'm having a really good time so far.
Nothing about the game system itself is telling me that this death cleric that doesn't even have the heal spell is actually supposed to be played as a support.
Playing a harm-font cleric is probably one of the most painful experiences the system has right now.
The Cast Down feat is pretty much all you need really, it's a 1 action metamagic that sends your target prone if they take damage from your next heal/harm (any damage, so even if they normal succeed), it can be a 3 action long range reliable proning tool, or a melee 2 action into a 1 action strike if you're frontlining, works well with Divine Weapon too. Even outside of specifically using Harm with Cast Down you the Divine list doesn't change, you still have access to Bless Heroism Blazing Armory and so on, so you have access to amazing support tools regardless of your cleric font.
If your party needs healing you're still likely to have decent medicine, and no need to feel like you're betraying your evil cleric vibe, Rovagug the god of destruction dictates: "All things must be destroyed, but the tools of destruction will be destroyed last."
@@-ring-a-ding-my-dingalingoh my I can't even imagine the frustration of trying to play that character.
@@-ring-a-ding-my-dingaling Not disagreeing with you, but a Haste spell and good Speed can make you a walking unholy fireball!
This is my current pain... I feel this.
Thank you for this video it's really amazing! I've been GM'ing the Beginner box now going into Abomination Vaults in Foundry and I have a few casters so this is going to help a lot.
This idea that blasters should compare with ranged martials is a misconception.
A ranged martial has more hps and better ac than casters, they have same ac and same hps that martials have. So a ranged martial is safer than a melee one, but a caster doesn't get the same benefit so he shouldn't suffer the same trade off. Because a caster, except bounded casters and kinecist and few other exceptions, doesn't have a melee option to compare to in the first place.
The ranged martial has more HP and better AC, but the caster also has a better Will save and magic items to do more than just blast. And the blaster caster's raw DPR is comparable while also having the versatility to do different damage types and target weak defenses.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG Yes, and the caster paid for his versatility with limited spell slots. The damage begins to decrease as the spell level drops and that's fair, because you traded consistency for versatility, but you shouldn't have to pay the same price twice.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG Now that you've made me think about it, the versatility of casters suffers from quite a few problems, namely how bad some spells are. Starting with single target spells that have the incapacitation tag and only have a significant effect on failure or critical failure. Arriving at spells which, as you yourself point out, are only useful as a scroll and don't trigger a save, and these in themselves are not bad, but they are not exclusive to casters, because with a single dedication feat or sometimes even without, any martial can use them. To then get to npc spells, like "quick sort", up to spells that make you worse like "nudge the odds". So this versatility not only comes at a high price, but it's also marred by a huge amount of questionable spells.
Well, i am *very* happy when i receive those incapacitation spells in my face from a mook.
With my sorcerer, all my signature spells are those with the incapacitation trait, so I can use the right rank for the right level of creature to get the most out of the spell.
I know they aren't bad but I just can't mentally pick incapacitation spells. I would rather just pick things like slow with doesn't have it and is always reliable
I love this vid! I so needed this as a new spellcaster to PF2. This helps it make so much more sense, especially for a prepared caster and I like how you outline the prcress, I'm so copying that down to have as a checklist next to me in my next game! Thanks again!
I'll be hesitantly getting into a new campaign- starting at level 5, at that. I will be using this as an effort to rework my mindset and try to give more.. strategic thinking to my spell selection and the likes. I think this will go better than my previous campaigns did.
I think my failing points were:
1. Coming in with a 1E mindset of just expecting spells to flat obliterate anything.
2. The far more granular math, actions, and DCs/saving throws.
Idea: Divine and Primal casters get "Guided Strike" as divine or spiritual forces guide your next attack roll. Functionally similar but different to True Strike. Probably give like a +6 status bonus which is about on par with rerolling, but doesn't negate concealed/hidden, and wont stack with other status bonuses like Inspire Courage.
FYI I've done an analysis (for a future vid) that approximates rolling twice and keeping the better result as closer to a +3
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG I know in 5e its calculated to be about +5, but that's without the crit range rules that PF2e has. I'm surprised to hear that it's as low as +3 though, thought it would be around +4 to be equal.
I'd much rather they buff spell attack scaling then make people reliant on another spell in order to use a whole archetype of spells.
@@KitusserIf there were a problem with spell scaling in the first place, sure.
@@Dharengo The creators of the game themselves say that spell attack accuracy is intentionally made the way it is due to true strike. You're just dead wrong.
Playing a 20th-level Wizard. Let me tell you that most 1st & 2nd rank spells do not scale that high up without being heightened. But 3rd rank Slow is still one of the best spells in my whole spell list even with 10th rank spells! Of course if you heighten it to 6th rank it is really ridiculous.
Thank you for making this video. I think the most important lesson is just hoe important support spells are. I think in other systems they tend to be a bit boring because when get a slight buff when you can just outright kill an enemy as fast as possible. But PF2 is challenging and making your allies more effective really does give nice good teamwork vibes and celebrations. Playing a real support role in PF2 is much more rewarding and less boring than most other systems.
I will say, I actually felt Awesome being able to spam cantrips at 1, because I know my casting of magic weapon completely changes the flow of combat.
Foundry's PF2e plug-in Modifiers Matter is great for showing every +1 and -1 that carries the party
I actually think that having the spell slots like in D&D 5e is much more interesting and provides much more tactical combat situations then the Pathfinder 2E version of The Wizard where if you only chose to prepare Fireball once then you can only cast it once. So if you don't realize you're going to be going up against something week to Fire and you don't bother to prepare Fireball but you prepare a third level version of color blind, for instance, then you are sol. And that is not fun.
You want to make a worthwhile caster?
-Ignore any offensive spell that either uses a spell attack or has anything other than a basic saving throw.
-You do not advance in proficiency nearly as quick as a fighter, nor are their pieces of equipment that increase your spell DC or Spell attack, so you have to always assume they will make the save beyond level 4.
-If given the option, always take the spell that buffs an ally over debuffing an opponent. No point in making a guy stunned for a turn if you have a 60% the spell slot doesn't do anything.
-Think hard on spells that must be sustained, action economy is massive and losing a whole action a turn is devastating unless your action eats at least 1 of your opponents actions to deal with it you aren't winning the trade.
-Always invest in reach spell feat because ignoring touch requirements on spells is the biggest powerboost in the game, It lets you maintain your distance and relative safety.
Just find a big beefy martial with a fat attack and meaty damage dice and stack as many buffs as you can fit on him without overlaping...
You only have to do this if you yourself aren’t receiving any support from your martials and the other casters, martials feel pretty crummy too if they receive no support
Lots of great idea's and insights.
Good for when I finally get my old table to do PF2e so I can do a quick education in session 0
Another cantrip that does damage on a failed attack is Acid Splash, as the splash damage takes effect on failed but not critically failed attacks. That and triggering area damage weakness make it useful despite the low scaling. Swarms and trolls beware.
Kitty. :3
(7:15)
(21:34)
Calling out spellcasters for being spoiled, is a high wisdom, low charisma move!
...
If we are trying to convince casters, (or anyone,) to join our hobby, we should try to focus on the positives our our system, instead of driving them away by calling their fun "wrong."
...
That's how public opinion turned against the gorgnard, no matter how valid their points may be. Let's not make the same mistake.
I think you make good points. And Paizo executed a non Anime Esque Martial Style (ie Path of War or Tome of Battle) as best as can be...but you kinda miss the point. Players don't like playing support in most games, there are some who do sure but most want to do damage or at least cool stuff in a fight. Casters don't get to do massive single target damage which might be fine but their mass CC from a Web or Mass Suggestion is also much worse.
Hopefully leaning into more Thematic Casters will let them boost Casters up but the Kineticist was not reassuring. Still feels too nerfed
Also in contrary to what is being said, support also feels shit because your impact is minimal. So even in their best role caster feel like shit.
I will never understand not thinking support is cool as fuck. Being the difference between whether someone hits or misses, saves or sucks, or lives and dies - especially at the table of a social game - is easily one of the most satisfying feelings in the world.
@@Dimitrishuter
People would rather be the Sniper than the Spotter
@@Dimitrishuter it is, if you are actually making an noticeable positive impact. But buffs in pathfinder 2e are too small and shortlived as well as mostly nonstackable that you end up not mattering and any math will show your support caster being a fighter instead would have a much higher positive impact.
Path of war and tome of battle are anime as hell
I liked this video on this topic much more than the other ones. Feels less “think differently stupid” and more of. Here is why these more supportive or debuff spells are actually good.
Summon spells are definitely good early, but later they don't quite work as well. Once you hit level 6 and above your highest level spell slot can only summon a creature 4 or 5 levels lower than the parties current level. So its attacks and DC'S will be low enough that all it is providing is out of combat utility, flanking and maybe draws the bosses second or third attack action, and it may just die from that. In this case the difference between your summon being 5 levels lower and 9 levels lower is meaningless and you have better uses for your highest spell slot.
Coming from Dnd just looking at magic missle, I'm already put off. The whole point of the spell was that it allowed the caster the option to choose which targets to hit.
So if 3 wizards were channeling to open a gate to the nine hells, I could in 5e fire off a missile at each target run and duck behind a crate as the gate collapsed.
In Path Finder, I could only target 1 creature, and I would have to sacrifice moving in order to cast the missles. So, if say by killing just one of the three channeling mages, it was enough to destabilize the portal, and upon doing this results in a violent collapse, sending a wave energy wiping out the two remaining mages and MYSELF! How is this good?
There's things that intrigued me about Pathfinder. Seeing as I play dual wielding wizard in 5e, the very essence of my build would be impractical in Pathfinder 2.
Why dual wield if penalized to the point any spell I were to cast wouldn't hit.
Finally! .. but, oh my, over an hour!
I need my midday nap before I can tackle this beast of a video.
Naps: How to handle brain things good.
I really enjoyed this, thank you
If your campaign often centers on one type of foe - either a monster keyword or an organization - then get additional lore on that type. That way you'll always have good recall knowledge. Spending an action can really help to avoid spending a spell slot going up against its highest defense. Or using an incap spell on a higher level monster.
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For arcane and primal casters, they can get cantrips to deal almost any damage type. You can get extra cantrips through the additional cantrip feat, some ancestries, and multiclassing. Being able to target any weakness is a great way to enhance your effectiveness. With needle darts we add piercing and any special material you can get a chunk of.
I'm trying to figure out if the metal that is used for needle darts when it returns to you after the attack does it return to you in the same form that it was prior to the attack or is it just the chunk of metal now? Because in my current campaign I have a cold iron shield that would be amazing if I could use needle darts to have cold iron needle darts against Fey and still use it as a shield after the attack:-)
@@undrhil I would assume that it returns to the same form after the attack. I'd rule that way when I'm running.
@@philopharynx7910 I hope that Ronald thinks like you do :-)
@@undrhil It's easy enough to ask. If not, you can get a chunk of cold iron or silver for 10 gp each. I'd like to see if they will come up with effects for other exotic materials. Essentially a focus cost for other effects.
3:20 Martial fans: "No u cant use a higher level creature as a single enemy in an encounter! Martials are worse at hitting them than casters!"
... Um, yeah? Youre listing a reason for the results of the testing not refuting it.
I personally find that it is hard to build effective "thematic" characters, particularly casters, in PF2e... You are correct in saying that their strength (and by extension weakness) is their versatility, in that if you build to a theme.... say a character who is not a jack-of-all-trades like an all fire, or an all cold, or all necrotic, damage based caster you are going to struggle (particularly depending on party composition) at low levels. I also personally find the "divine" list severely lacking early on unless you want to be strictly a support or healer type, particularly among certain sorcerer types (Divine) and even some cleric types (non Sarenrae cloisters). This leads to many interesting types being tried and quickly abandoned through sheer disappointment. A large part of this I blame on the design team leads. As we have seen, in many of their own words, we are playing their vision of the game, and some have shown us, again in their own words, that they hold philosophies that stray from the origins of a "collective storytelling roleplay game" into the realm of an adversarial board game at times. I cannot tell you how many times I have encountered GMs afraid to step outside the written AP and/or bend rules for the sake of a better story, or make the game into a party vs the GM debacle. (But that's a gripe for another time, and thankfully the latter is few and far between despite happening too often for my tastes.)
That said, I want to thank Ronald for doing videos like this because it does open ones eyes to things that may have been overlooked and not often thought of strategies to make the game hopefully more enjoyable for players in those early, unforgiving, levels. I often find myself wishing they had made these early levels more survivable, giving players a slight leg up at the start, and gradually dialed things into a balance with things as the characters progress, and learn new strategies, tactics, and how their GM runs the game. If a player, new or old, but particularly new ones, does not have fun in those initial sessions and levels, you will lose them as they lose interest through frustration.
Calm Emotions reveals my old 5E biases. That spell is going to be part of every bard or cleric I build.
Casters need an item bonus too spell attack roles. Like +1 from lvl 1 too lvl10, +2 from 10 too 20 but it's on a staff. Eldritch trickster needs a massive buff.
Do more of these advice videos. This was great!
I think my only issue with the flexible prepared casting (and the elemental spell list) is that they take a class feat slot. I get that flexible prepared casting gets less spell slots as a trade off. You get less spell slots but are also less likely to have wasted spell slots because you prepared a spell and a need for it didn't arise that day.
But also taking your level 2 class feat just feels like a step too far to me, an extra penalty that doesn't really need to be there.
good information and all, but could use more face time for the cat familiar you have wandering about in the background.
Pf2 is more about rules than anything else. Twice its popularity was due to WOTC mistakes. Its community is full of gatekeepers, and the magic system has issues that people are trying to "not address."
If crunchines are what you like, then by all means, enjoy it.
I would like to point out why the strongest mechanic of PF2 is the three actions economy: it makes things simple.
Also, a better comparison of focus spells is to compare them to the Warlock packed magic spell slots from 5e. Because they essentially match up as the Warlock has one spell slot at first level that they regain on a short rest which is 1 hour and 5B whereas most characters with the focus pool in 2E have one Focus point they only have to spend 10 minutes to reclaim that Focus point. So it finds up better to use that analogy for people who play 5V instead of using the 4E and counterpowers comparison that you used in the video.
Great video as always
Great series. Thanks 👍
I chose a Debuff/Control/Supp-ish Wizard for my first ever character in PF 2e, and man idk what to say... I'm supposed to be weak af yet I'm pretty sure I'm up there on the imaginary dps chart just by spamming Electric Arc. It's actually op because I do both AOE dmgs and control with just 2 actions using stuff like Scatter Scree as well.
The only problem with magic (well I can only speak about this kind of wizard tbh, didn't try anything else yet), is that it can get a bit repetitive if the only thing you do for 5 fights is spam your cantrips; but there are ways to avoid that too... From staves or wands to scrolls and even some feats as well (for example, I'm aiming to get Battle Planner after upgrading Warfare in a couple lvls).
Also also, if I remember correctly, even as a wizard you are trained with ranged weapons too, at least I believe you are with the crossbow, so there's an alternative to cantrips too.
TLDW:
Castering good is playing a buffbot at low level and hoarding true strike wands thereafter.
Fun game.
@13:35 So this is one thing I don't get about pathfinders system. Yes, she now has a 25% chance to do crit damage, the additional damage she would do is 34. However in order to achieve this, 3 out of 4 party members had to give up doing potential damage, the sorcerer had to use one spell which is a relatively limited resource. 3 people "wasted" their turn, in order to give 1 character the ability to MAYBE do more damage. Those other party members are not really any better positioned themselves, fear will fall off next turn, flanking bonus would have been achieved regardless as both melee's got into position, the situation on the board is that they are not individually better off in the next round to do damage or support the fight. Are you saying that the other party members would not have been able to make up 34 damage if each had attempted an attack rather than supporting? And if she doesn't crit, what then? 3 out of 4 party members basically skipped their turn and got nothing out of it. The sorcerer had to use one spell which is a relatively limited resource. 3 people "wasted" their turn, in order to give 1 character the ability to MAYBE do double damage. If the other 3 party members are not playing builds that can make up that damage, then fine the optimal way to play is to buff their main DPS. But if they all have decent combat capability, then whats the point of paying the opportunity cost of applying status effects for 1 round only?
Basically, whats the point in doubling your potential, not guaranteed but only potential, damage if it will require you to expend triple the number of actions and resources to set it up?
I hadn't thought about it before watching some of the list video, but the ability to choose between three target DCs that are likely different is a distinct advantage and tactical puzzle that AC has no equivalent of in the current edition. Including spell attacks that target AC, a thoughtful caster has 4 potential target numbers to choose from while most martials are stuck with one for dealing raw damage.
It honestly does not seem that interesting to me. Keep in mind on average beyond level 3 casters are -3 hit chance/ dc check in comparison to martials. In other words for you to have the sameish chance as the average martial to hit you need to know the enemies lowest number, and have the spell to target it, and if you do this are you rewarded with a higher chance to do something cool or helpful in comparison to a martial? Nope, just everything else has like 20% chance to fail at all and is more likely to be crit success. wait until "every +1 matters!" mfers see spellcasters delayed profeciency jumps and 0 hit chance scaling from runes. They don't seem to think those multiple +1s mean anything.
Soooo...if every +1 matters, and casters are automatically +1 to +3 lower on their attacks and DCs due to not having any item bonuses available like martials...I'm supposed to be okay with playing at that severe a mathematical disadvantage? How can I not feel much weaker when my spells are getting saved against or I'm just missing due to that lack of item enhancements?
Caster DCs do not lag behind anything, nobody has better DCs than full casters.
@@ellenok Stop, monster caster do have +2 to save DCs
Note at 1:01:42 Pixies aren't tiny! Sprites are. Pixies are small.